Databases are like automobiles. You have the vintage cars that everyone looks back on fondly, and now they cost 20 times what they did back in the 1970s. Additionally, you have the new cars that don’t have the same sex appeal but work far better than cars built 30 years ago; they are faster, get better mileage, and have the latest technology.
Many data sets are being relocated into the cloud, and those charged with moving the workloads and information should consider their options.
The first choice is to simply move your business database license to the public cloud supplier. It is called”bring your license” (BYOL). Here is the path of least resistance, considering that all you’re doing is transferring data native to database A to database A on a different host platform, this time hosted in the public cloud.
But, it is not the least expensive way to go. You’re likely paying out the nose annually for your business database, and it probably does not have the features, functions, and performance of a cloud-native database options, which have on-demand (usage-based) pricing.
Although your particular requirements may vary, generally speaking, cloud-native databases are a better way to relocate data to the cloud. The drawback is that you’ll want to load and recast the information for a new native storage version. In addition, you’ll need to modify the programs that access the database.
My take on this is that you’d likely have to refactor the applications anyway to leverage cloud-native services, so you may as well refactor for a new cloud-native database as well. This may increase the frustration of some, but the result are software and databases that function better, offer more features and functions, cost less to use, and are purpose-built for your particular use case.
This is one of those times when moving to the cloud means you’ll have the right choices in front of you, but they’ll come at a higher first cost. But, I guess that in the event that you don’t do what’s best now, you’ll likely have to migrate your data twice, at an even higher cost.
Let’s not do this.
