Is it time to outsource your Database Administrator role?

Historically, the primary role of a database administrator (DBA’s) was to monitor, maintain and provide access to database environments. However, in recent years we have seen a significant shift towards them also being responsible for developing the architecture, design, security, performance and strategy for This, alongside the shift of moving data to the cloud, has meant that there is increased pressure on DBAs, as business critical applications are reliant on the database platform and often needed to be monitored and maintained outside of the normal working day hours.

Therefore, businesses are looking to increase their DBA capability, and the decision has to be made as to whether to hire an additional resource (or resources) into the company or to outsource to a managed services provider.

Cost of Hiring

Hiring an internal resource can be costly as there are many factors to consider outside of the base salary: the table below highlights the cost of those to give a better idea of overall resource cost. Remember this is only for one resource, giving in-country business hours, not 24*7 or out of hours support; to get nearer the latter, a minimum of 2 resources will need to be recruited.

As well as this you then have the internal cost of interviewing, recruiting and onboarding which could add up to significant hours of work. Finally, this gives you standard working day cover, with no additional cover for out of hours, weekends or bank holidays. What do you also do when the full-time DBA has holiday, illness or training? A managed services provider takes this headache away, guaranteeing the support as and when you need it.

Why DBA as a Service

As well as cost, the key reason customers decide to use a managed services provider rather than recruit in-house is they have the peace and mind of a modern DBA service operated by specialists, monitoring the environment 24*7. Key benefits within this are:

• Flexibility: you can add or reduce demand on your database support to reflect peaks in business – e.g. Black Friday for retail
• Lower total cost: as per the figures above, managed services is a fixed price, lower total cost than hiring internally
• Focus on application development: this allows the current DBA(s) to concentrate on business strategic work, giving them more job satisfaction and helping retention
• Proactive database management: proactive monitoring and fixes which leads to an enhanced experience for all users
• Optimised performance: experienced DBAs within a managed service constantly review and improve architecture and design of the databases
• Expertise and knowledge transfer: DBAs within a managed service work alongside any current team and as such, transfer technical expertise on what may often be new services
• 24/7 support: it is now often the case that businesses rely on systems working 24/7 – a managed service gives you this peace of mind

What does the Adatis DBA as a service provide:

Adatis provides customers a 24*7 DBA as a service that is paid monthly, using our team of skilled DBAs and will provide the following benefits:

• Remove the need to focus on the operation of your Microsoft database estate and ancillary tools whether hosted on-premise or in Azure.
• A service that fully supports your existing in-house capability without the need to provide an in-house specialist team.
• With the ability to scale up the service and scale out to provide ad-hoc development capability and other auxiliary services
• Available on a monthly subscription model

If you’d like to find out more about DBA as a service that could help you, please visit our DBA webpage or get in touch today.