Databases are one of the building blocks of a modern company. The ability to store all mission-critical data in an organized and easily accessible format is critical to a smoothly-running business. However, it is difficult for companies to keep up with the pace of change and many are still relying on legacy systems. It is time to say NO MORE to complex, unreliable databases and embrace the future of database optimization. There are many advantages that database consolidation can bring to your company, but here are the top five reasons your company should implement database tuning.
1. Increased Security
Cybersecurity is of paramount importance and the risk to your business is increasing every day. With such a large volume and variety of threats targeting everyone from private citizens to corporations and federal governments, your business must protect itself. By adopting a database consolidation approach into your IT strategy, you can lower the risk of a crippling cyberattack in three ways:
- Fewer systems to manage means security policies are easier to enforce, ultimately minimizing the risk of security incidents.
- By consolidating databases, points of access are scaled back, ensuring there are fewer exploitable vulnerabilities in the system.
- With fewer systems to manage, your IT staff will be able to better monitor and react to threats.
In addition to these advantages, modern databases have far better security features than legacy systems, so the overall risk of intrusion is lowered by simply keeping your hardware and software up to date.
2. Reduced Costs
The more providers a company utilizes, the more costs it will incur for those services. A simple analogy is that of hiring a team of ten painters, each armed with brushes, compared to a single painter equipped with an electronic paint sprayer. Both groups will paint the house in the same amount of time, yet the painter using the sprayer can easily do the work alone due to the efficiency of his equipment. You will pay much less for the painter with the sprayer since you are only paying for one resource versus paying him plus his nine coworkers. Many separate databases are like the paintbrushes: they do the job but are limited in scale and can only provide value using the limited set of data contained within them. Combined databases are like the paint sprayer: fewer resources are required while yielding greater efficiency. In consolidating your databases into an optimized platform, you will lower your operating costs by limiting the database licenses you are paying for. Also, if you are hosting the databases yourself, you will reduce hardware, maintenance, and electrical costs.
3. Ease of Access
While splitting up information into separate databases makes sense in some situations, inefficient processes and frustrated employees are inevitable. Perhaps your company houses invoices, contact, shipping information, and financial data in separate databases. Meridian has witnessed such inefficient data architectures many times before. Even hosting information in just two databases results in slow processing times and poor user experience. One reason to separate databases is to restrict specific users from accessing information outside of their scope of responsibility. However, modern databases have excellent access restriction tools, allowing each employee to only have access to the data that they need to perform their job.
Another reason that databases are separate within an organization is a lack of strategic data architecture. As a company grows, different departments will often spin up databases to house the data for a specific need without consulting other departments. The result is a disjointed web of information that makes it difficult to get a 360-degree view of the company’s data. Involving a strategic partner can help you establish a proper data architecture for now and for the future, avoiding many of these issues.
3. Ease of Disaster Recovery
Accidents happen and whether it is a natural disaster or power outage, you want to be prepared for the worst. No matter how cutting edge a system is, you will likely encounter a production issue at some point. The bigger the footprint that you have, the greater the chance of a disaster or a security attack occurring. By consolidating databases, you can ensure that all your data is protected by the best possible backup and recovery system. Putting all of your eggs in one basket may seem like a risk, but in reality, it makes the process of recovery far more streamlined. In simplifying your data center infrastructure, you ensure your IT staff only has to repair a limited amount of systems, allowing them to concentrate their efforts and bring the systems back online more quickly. While there is no way to truly prevent disaster, consolidating your databases is one measure your business can take to mitigate the damage and resume operations as fast as possible. To avoid true disaster, make sure that you have a robust disaster recovery strategy that includes either a self-managed solution or Disaster Recovery as a Service managed by a trusted partner.
4. Reliability
As any engineer will tell you, the more parts a system has, the more likely it is for it to fail. It’s simple math: if one system has a 5% chance of experiencing failure in a given period, ten systems will have a 50% chance of one of them failing in that same time frame. By consolidating multiple databases, you reduce the points of failure. Additionally, a scaled-back maintenance workload allows your IT staff to focus on the smaller ecosystem and increase its reliability.
If you are looking to consolidate your database and streamline your processes, the experts at Meridian are here to help you architect a solution that meets your unique needs. With deep expertise in database optimization and consolidation, as well as managed services, we will help your business run smarter now and be prepared for the future.
Start optimizing your company today and call us at +1 (888) 684-3644 or send an email to sales@themeridian.com.