Why not database SaaS?
After a flurry of recent announcements of database SaaS (Software as a Service), eWeek has published a backlash article. The angle is that database SaaS is too expensive, because you can get decent DBMS for free and per-gig usage charges might be expensive for big databases.
I think that’s missing the point. Most OLTP databases are pretty small. Or, if they’re big, they get that way through a lot of transactions. In the first case, hosted management is cheap. In the second case, hosted management is taking care of a large burden for you.
Indeed, even data warehouse SaaS has a market, which should be a huge plausibility market for any other kind of database SaaS. Part of it exists for regulatory reasons — there’s a whole lot of CRM analysis using credit data that maybe shouldn’t be imported onto the analyzer’s premises. But Kognitio insists, apparently with a small amount of customer evidence backing it up, that there’s a general SaaS market for data warehousing as well.
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2 Responses to “Why not database SaaS?”
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Most small-to-medium sized companies these days do not host their own web servers; they pay someone to worry about redundant Internet connections, air conditioning, uninterrupted power, and so on. Similarly, some DBMS’s, especially if they are big and complex, require some care and feeding, so if you’re small-to-medium and need that kind of DBMS, it might make a lot of sense to outsource it. The purchase price of the DBMS, even if it’s free, is only part of the total cost of ownership.
I’m of the belief that a database SaaS is exactly what IS needed, particularly when the offering includes other tools in a suite, run by the same DB.