The past 15 months have provided an object lesson for all organizations in the importance of being agile and moving quickly to address new challenges and opportunities. The COVID-19 pandemic created even greater urgency to better manage and extract valuable insights from data for companies that were already dealing with expanding regulatory pressures, new data security risks, and burgeoning data volumes.
The pace of data growth shows no sign of letting up. In 2020, 64.2ZB of data was created or replicated, according to IDC, and, in its 2021 DataSphere and StorageSphere forecasts, the analyst firm projects that global data creation and replication will experience a compound annual growth rate of 23% over the 2020–2025 forecast period.
To better understand current trends in data management as well as digital transformation and cloud adoption and priorities, Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., also conducted a survey in partnership with Aerospike (“DBTA Digital Transformation and Cloud Workloads Study,” January 2021). According to the research, nearly three-quarters of respondents’ organizations have digital transformation budgets. For the larger companies in the survey—organizations with 5,000 or more employees—the percentage is even higher, at 94%.
Moreover, polyglot persistence in terms of database deployments is on the rise, according to another survey conducted by Unisphere Research late last year in partnership with Dell Technologies. The survey looked at the variety of database platforms in use and found that more than eight in 10 respondents support two or more database brands, and more than one-third support four or more (“Thriving in a Multi-Database World: PASS 2021 Survey on Data Diversity”). Even among this loyal Microsoft userbase, the era of the all-Microsoft shop is over, the survey found. With the surge of multiple database engines for different purposes, SQL Server shops have been taking on a rising level of diversity in recent years. Other relational DBMSs, as well as open source and NoSQL options, are all being deployed in these heterogeneous environments.
Whether cloud-based or on-prem, open source or proprietary, NoSQL or relational, cutting edge or well established, there are more options than ever for data architectures.
Spanning the spectrum of approaches, the DBTA 100 showcases forward-looking companies that are improving and expanding upon existing technologies and processes to help their customers use data more effectively. As we do each year, in addition to the DBTA 100, we also present View From the Top articles authored by industry executives explaining in their own words how their companies are uniquely handling today’s data management problems and opportunities. We encourage you to learn more about these organizations by visiting their websites.
To stay on top of the latest news, IT trends, and research, go to www.dbta.com, tune in to weekly webinars at www.dbta.com/Webinars, and access our extensive white paper library at www.dbta.com/DBTA-Downloads/WhitePapers.