Improving performance, increasing data security, ensuring high availability—each of these efforts are what today’s enterprises must accomplish to maintain a competitive edge. Powerful, secure databases are the key to achieving this level of modernity, where contemporary databases that are easy to manage and scale will undoubtedly be pivotal in supporting the AI era.
Gopal Ashok, group product manager, Google Cloud, and Gopal Ventrapragada, manager, software development engineering, Workday, joined DBTA’s webinar, Modernize Your Database with Cloud SQL: Reduce Costs and Boost Performance, to discuss how fully managed Cloud SQL can bring enterprises closer to their operational goals.
Ashok asserted that self-managing databases isn't the quick, safe, and easy option anymore—it’s a burden.
“Many customers hesitate to migrate their databases to the cloud, believing that their in-house expertise makes self-managing on VMs faster and easier,” said Ashok. “However, what we’re learning is that self-managing databases can be hard to scale, [putting] a lot of toil on administrators and app developers to keep the database performant, secure, and highly available. What that toil typically translates to is a loss of productivity.”
Atop a loss of productivity, strained staff and a risk of security breaches and downtime renders self-managed databases a greater peril than an asset. Many fall victim to a cost fallacy, noted Ashok—or the misconception that self-managing is cheaper due to a narrow focus of upfront costs, overlooking hidden expenses and long-term value of a fully managed solution.
“The cheapest option today may be the costliest in the long run,” argued Ashok, pointing to the management overhead, opportunity costs, and increased security and downtime costs that a self-managed database may impose upon its enterprises.
What is the value, then, of a managed database like Cloud SQL?
Ashok explained that compared to the extensive overhead incurred by self-managed solutions, fully managed databases alleviate the burdens that self-managed introduces, enabling enterprises to save significantly over time.
More specifically, Google’s Cloud SQL brings a variety of advantages to organizations seeking to transition from the self-managed space. As a fully managed relational database service, Cloud SQL is easy to set up, operate, and scale, offering full compatibility with source database engines—such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQL Server. Cloud SQL pairs enterprise-grade data protection, security, and governance with a developer-friendly infrastructure, empowering organizations to take control of their data architectures.
Cloud SQL also offers the following benefits:
- 44% more efficient DBAs, freeing up DBA and infrastructure team members to work on value-add and innovations
- 46 million requests per second through integrations with Security Command Center to identify vulnerability and configuration arrows
- 99% availability SLA via Google SRE managed infrastructure, reducing downtime and improving reliability
Following Ashok’s thorough examination of Cloud SQL, Ventrapragada walked webinar viewers through Workday’s transition to the fully managed database service. Workday—a leading SaaS provider of Finance and HR products—deals with over 10,000 customers of all sizes, with more than3 billion transactions processed per day.
Cloud SQL Enterprise Plus was a game-changer for Workday, since the company requires consistent high throughput and low latency from MySQL to deliver the best customer experience, explained Ventrapragada. With Cloud SQL Enterprise Plus’ ability to deliver improved performance at scale, Workday was able to improve team productivity with an easy-to-use, fully managed service.
For the full, in-depth webinar featuring extensive explanations, Workday’s journey with Cloud SQL, a demo, and more, you can view an archived version of the webinar here.