In the coming years, CIOs are going to be under pressure not just because of increasing demands but also because of the widening gap between demand and budget.
One of the Gartner reports for 2014 captures the above challenge very well.
“But despite the need to grow, there is pressure on budgets. The global weighted average expected change in CIO IT budgets is +0.2%. This lack of significant uptick presents challenges for the CIO and IT organization since there is a need to simultaneously renovate the core of IT systems and services, and exploit new technology options.”
I have heard when confronted with increasing demands from business, most CIOs retort back, “tell me where do I cut down”. It is a very frustrating situation for the CIOs when the budgets are barely catering to the existing IT systems running plus there are ever-increasing demands from their business and to top it all up, the IT landscape is changing much faster than anyone could predict. The case in point is deluge of data, devices – BYOD, shifting of focus to cloud, social platforms etc, all having impact on the enterprises and businesses.
In such a scenario, the wisest thing to do is look at the technologies powering the enterprises (which are commoditised), are we paying too much for these features, are there alternatives available at lower costs, are there ways to shift some dollars from these technologies?
And I feel, PostgreSQL is one of the key alternatives that hold a key to the above challenges. Let me explain how.
In the existing enterprise software, spend on Database constitutes the largest one. Spending on DBMSs will surpass spending on operating systems, making the former the largest enterprise software market in 2014.
It is a well-established fact by now, that the RDBMS technology has matured and most of its features are commoditised. So the question is why are customers paying so much from their budgets when they have an alternative available? In fact, many out there believe PostgreSQL is a perfect alternative for today’s RDBMS needs. There are varied reasons that will make PostgreSQL your preferred choice when you are looking for an alternative, to begin with, it has:
1. More than 20 years of active development
2. A strong, independent and thriving community
3. Been in production use for business critical applications
4. Commercial vendors such as EnterpriseDB and its eco-system for giving confidence for enterprise adoption
5. A strong Oracle compatibility and other enterprise class features being added by commercial vendors
Considering the complex nature of databases and its criticality for business operations, CIOs should not think of replacement of database from existing applications as a first step for adoption of PostgreSQL. There are many other ways one can introduce this low cost, robust database that can help you put the savings in the newer technologies. We have observed how some of our customers have started replacing non-critical applications or older applications (not anymore in production) with PostgreSQL – for the applications that need to be maintained for compliance purpose, and just by doing that alone, those companies have saved a lot on the licensing costs. Some CIOs have been able to use PostgreSQL for new applications and use the savings to acquire new skills sets to test upcoming technologies.
So if we come back to the original question, “Innovate and grow, but where is the budget?”, we may have an answer in one of today’s fastest growing databases – PostgreSQL – one that gives you an opportunity to save up to 60% from your RDBMS licence costs. And that’s big bucks, isn’t it?
Other Articles in the newsletter:
The Awesome Force-some! – Deepti Dilip
How to give up Oracle and welcome Postgres? – Rajni Baliyan