Is product saturation to blame for developers’ indifference towards database costs? It seems to be the case since majority of products in the market contain homogeneous database features. When it comes to selecting the best database during application development, novice and veteran developers overlook indirect costs. Direct costing is not reliable because it overlooks certain aspects explained below.
A database is a system that requires time and financial inputs. The Total Cost of Ownership, a financial paradigm borrowed from Managerial Accounting enlightens developers on indirect costs to be incurred. Iflexion Database Experts believe developers should consider the following direct costs when choosing a database
- License and support
- Infrastructure
- Database Administration hiring costs
- Staff training costs
Cloud services have enabled developers create and store applications at significantly lower expenses. On paper, the direct costs anticipated by the developer are staff salaries and cloud rental annual fees. However, unforeseen events may necessitate physical relocation to different premises. As a developer in such a situation, you need to prepare for the risks involved during data migration and financial costs of switching cloud services.
Iflexion Database Experts have identified 7 indirect costs using the Total Cost of Ownership
1. Vendor Lock-in
Modern databases run on Intel hardware, which is compatible with online cloud services. Developers using databases running on inferior hardware incur expensive data migration costs whenever transferring hardware or hopping to a different cloud service.
2. Limited use case applicability
Although various database brands have different standards, Standard Query Language (SQL) still remains the universal standard. Cheap databases that fall short of SQL requirements frustrate developers due to their limited scope of functions. For instance, a database may be good for analytics but poor at handling transactions. This unfortunate situation forces the developer to purchase a new database for functions that can easily be managed using a superior, SQL compliant database.
3. Learning duration
A sophisticated database requires plenty of hours devoted to learning basic and complex operations. Time is an important resource that ought to be spent developing and testing new products. Using sophisticated systems may cause the developer to hire trainers for new database administration staff, to enable him or her focus on other important aspects.
4. Labor costs
One advantage of highly automated databases is they require minimal supervision. The developer can use his time more efficiently to grow the business. Non standard databases are relatively more affordable but they require constant human supervision. To avoid data loss risks, developers relying on non standard databases have to hire database administration staff.
5. Performance Limits
All databases are designed with different maximum data thresholds. Using an inferior database for high data volume transactions frequently, is similar to driving an overloaded truck uphill.
This results in frequent downtime and that’s a real threat to your brand’s reputation. Not forgetting extra expenses for purchasing additional databases to relieve the currently overwhelmed database.
6. Product availability
Availability is simply a measure of how often a database is out of commission due to failure of one kind or another. Downtime affects the developer and client because customers cannot transact successfully on an unavailable online store. Downtime causes loss of customers who desire database reliability at all times.
7. Database Flexibility
The ability of a database to be easily distributed across multiple data centers is important because low disaster recovery costs are incurred at the onset of an unfortunate turn of events. High flexibility facilitates smoother data migration between databases.
Final Thoughts
TCO is the best approach to determining costs of purchasing and sustaining databases because it considers realistic possibilities such as physical relocation. Even though it may seem expensive to purchase a top brand database, the price tag is lower than paying database administration staff salaries. Strategic developers value elastic SQL databases such as NuoDB because of convenient data mobility between databases.