We want databases. Moreover, we want cloud-native databases because organizations need to offer cloud-first information services architected in line with the nature of the virtualized and abstracted breed of enterprise applications now in proliferation.
We also need distributed SQL databases, because the ‘highly popular’ claims made in relation to this approach are generally justified i.e. as we seek to move beyond legacy database systems and truly scale in cloud-native environments (and we can’t emphasize that word ‘scale’ enough) we can use distributed SQL as a single logical database deployed across multiple physical nodes in a single datacenter (or across many datacenters if required) to deliver elastic scale and bulletproof systems engineering.
We need all of that, plus we need all of it across all three major cloud hyperscalers, please – so (just in case anyone needs reminding) that’s Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.
Feel the need for best-of-breed
Independent cloud-native distributed SQL database specialist CockroachDB thinks it can pull all that off – in fact, it may have already done so – the company has announced the realization of its vision to enable customers to run a best-of-breed distributed database everywhere and anywhere.
With the launch of CockroachDB-as-a-service running on Microsoft Azure (in limited access at the time of writing), CockroachDB is now available on-demand across all three major cloud providers.
Did we mention that we need a serverless, on-consumption data platform for better agility and (hopefully) better price point delivery? CockroachDB does come in a serverless as-per-consumption format & form factor and is built to allow users to read and write data across multiple geographically distributed regions paying only for the exact amount of data stored and usage of that data on the CockroachDB serverless platform.
Showing up shoddy ‘scale-up’ systems
These additions are intended to provide software application development professionals and all manner of IT Ops-operations staff with greater flexibility, capability and control in their cloud strategies. The whole technology proposition from CockroachDB is intended to be considerably less expensive to operate than traditional scale-up systems and once again it comes back to resilience and elastic scale to enable firms to expand into new markets.
“The idea of our platform is to be able to survive a cloud vendor outage, so we’re not going to be dependent on any cloud vendor,” said Kevin Holditch, head of platform, Form3. “We’re going to have a Kubernetes cluster in each cloud vendor — so Azure, AWS, GCP – and run CockroachDB across the three.”
Cockroach Labs’ DataBase-as-a-Service management system (DBMS) on Azure with multi-region deployments can support local performance and data compliance while operating on and integrating with the Microsoft ecosystem. Organizations can choose between cloud providers or across multiple cloud providers and can mix workloads between owned datacenters and public cloud providers.
Several IT industry surveys suggest that up to 80% of transactional workloads have not yet moved to the cloud. That is expected to change as organizations re-evaluate their tech stack. CIO’s are prioritizing moving their most critical data into the cloud. This movement is indicative of a massive market shift that could signal the end of market dominance by databases like Oracle and IBM.
According to magical analyst house Gartner, “Data and analytics leaders can [plan] against their operational use cases for relational and nonrelational cloud DBMSs, which increasingly require features for augmented operations via Machine Learning (ML), multi-cloud scenarios and effective financial governance to achieve leadership.” Further, the cauldron-stirring soothsayers recommend that firms select their cloud DBMS independent of the strategic cloud provider. “Independent software vendors (ISVs) with multi-cloud and inter-cloud capability are more likely to fit best when using multiple cloud service providers (CSPs),” note the enchanting Gartner necromancers.
Cockroach Labs also released multi-region capabilities for its consumption-based, auto-scaling offering, CockroachDB serverless. The update allows customers to distribute rows of data across multiple cloud regions, while still functioning as a single logical database and paying only for the exact storage and compute uses.
It’s a cloud ‘journey’
“While the move of transactional data to the cloud is accelerating, many data leaders are still at the beginning of their cloud journey and are finding that legacy solutions simply do not meet their needs, especially for their mission-critical applications,” said Spencer Kimball, CEO and co-founder at Cockroach Labs. “This release embodies the fulfillment of the vision we set out to accomplish eight years ago. We offer true flexibility and resilience and will meet you where you are in your cloud journey–now and in the future.”
With both legacy or existing cloud database solutions, the complexity and cost attached to spinning up a new region adds up very quickly.CockroachDB serverless now enables any organization to build applications that serve a globally dispersed user-base at incredibly low cost and simpler operations, opening up a global audience to companies of any size.
