Survey reveals COVID-19 driving cloud adoption

COVID-19 has changed everything. That isn’t news. In May 2020, MariaDB conducted a global survey that looked at the initial COVID-19 impact on businesses moving to the cloud and IT professionals’ attitudes on what has changed – and what they think will change as a result of COVID-19.

One trend we saw is that the global crisis is driving cloud adoption. 40% said COVID-19 is accelerating their move to the cloud. It makes sense. The cloud lets companies increase capacity without investing in hardware and facilities. Additionally, there is less need to add staff if your cloud provider is maintaining the infrastructure and extending the abilities of your existing team. With the disruptions from COVID-19 and the probability of future disruptions, there has never felt like a more urgent time to move into the cloud.

The Promise of the Cloud

The promise of the cloud is flexible solutions on robust hardware with automation, ease of use, and excellent support. Of course, to actually realize the promise, it’s important to choose your cloud provider wisely.

When it comes to moving your database to the cloud (and Gartner, Inc. predicts that by 2022, 75% of all databases will be deployed or migrated to a cloud platform), some things you may want to consider are:

  • What version of software is available?
  • What capabilities are supported? HTAP, Analytical, Transactional, HA?
  • What architecture is being used? Is it secure?
  • How much support is provided?

MariaDB SkySQL, introduced in March 2020, delivers on the promise of the cloud.

Current and Flexible Solutions

Unlike, for example, Azure Database, running on MariaDB Community Server 10.3, or Amazon Aurora or Google Cloud SQL both running on MySQL 5.7, MariaDB SkySQL runs the latest version of MariaDB Enterprise Server and includes all the latest security fixes and updated features like INSTANT schema changes and temporal tables.

Did you notice that AWS was missing from the list? Soon after we introduced SkySQL, AWS updated their MariaDB offering to MariaDB Community Server 10.4. Now that they have, they’ll begin falling further and further behind like they always do. MariaDB Community Server 10.4 has been GA since June 2019, and AWS just got it. MariaDB 10.5 is right around the corner and will be available in SkySQL. How long will it take AWS?MariaDB SkySQL also delivers on the promise of the cloud by providing a broader range of solutions than any other DBaaS provider. With a few clicks, SkySQL provides transactional, analytical and hybrid transactional/analytical solutions in a range of topologies and instance sizes with vCPU, memory, and storage sizes to meet the needs of your workload. Customers can choose from the standard options or become Power subscribers and customize everything from instance size to UI appearance.

Cloud Native Architecture

SkySQL has been architected as cloud native. We’ve used state-of-the-art architecture including: Kubernetes for container orchestration and high availability, ServiceNow for configuration and workflow management, Prometheus and Grafana for real-time monitoring and visualization. We have a cloud-native storage architecture, and the first to combine block storage for transactions and object storage for analytics

Data storage is specific to database requirements to optimize performance and costs. Transactional databases use the InnoDB storage engine and persistent block storage. Analytical databases use the MariaDB ColumnStore storage engine and cost-effective object storage that grows with your needs. Hybrid databases use both block and object storage for high performance transactional and low-cost analytical storage.

SkySQL is currently available on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), in six GCP regions across three continents. Because SkySQL is architected with Kubernetes, it is cloud platform agnostic. SkySQL launched on Google Cloud Platform and will soon be available on AWS followed by Azure.

Security

In our survey, security was flagged as the biggest concern when respondents were asked what would prevent them from going “all-in” on a cloud database solution (73%). It’s one of our biggest concerns too and why we designed SkySQL with a robust cloud security architecture. SkySQL is designed to address the security needs of our demanding enterprise customers.

  • Data at rest is encrypted.
  • Data in transit is encrypted by SSL/TLS.
  • The system is designed with compartmentalization, isolation, and indirect access such that data stored in SkySQL services cannot be accessed by our operations engineers and SREs.
  • All access and commands performed by MariaDB employees is logged

Support

Support is the final element to realizing the promise of the cloud. SkySQL is supported by MariaDB – by our MariaDB-certified SkyDBA team, Site Reliability Engineers (SRE), and the MariaDB engineering team who built MariaDB Platform – the experts who know the platform best. We are MariaDB and MariaDB Platform is our sole focus. Technical support is included with every SkySQL subscription and can be upgraded to provide the level necessary for your enterprise, up to and including our SkyDBA subscription with a global team providing operational and consultative support.

SkySQL Delivers the Promise of the Cloud

As you consider making a move to the cloud, I think you’ll find MariaDB SkySQL provides the solution you are looking for now and with the expertise and commitment to adapt to changes and meet your future business needs too.

Dive into the MariaDB cloud adoption statistics.