In the early days of cloud, data was second only to security amid reasons not to migrate. Today, data as a migration barrier may be in ascendance – but cloud vendors have determinedly worked to fix that.
Having a single database for a business is an idea whose time came and went. Of course, you can argue that there never was a time when a single database type would suffice. But, today, fielding a selection of databases seems to be key to most plans for cloud computing.
While Amazon and to a slightly lesser extent Microsoft furnished their clouds with a potpourri of databases, Google stood outside the fray.
It’s not hard to imagine that a tech house like Google, busy inventing away, might fall into a classic syndrome where it dismisses databases that it hadn’t itself invented. It’s engineers are rightly proud of homebrewed DBs such as Big Query, Spanner and Big Table. But having watched Microsoft and Amazon gain in the cloud, the company seems more resolute now to embrace diverse databases.
The trend was manifest earlier this month at Google Cloud Next 2019. This was the first Google Cloud confab under the leadership of Thomas Kurian, formerly of Oracle.
Kurian appears to be leading Google to a more open view on a new generation of databases that are fit for special purpose. This is seen in deals with DataStax, InfluxDB, MongoDB, Neo4j, Redis Labs and others. It also is seen in deeper support for familiar general purpose engines like PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server, taking the form of Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL and Cloud SQL for Microsoft SQL Server, respectively
In a call from the Google Cloud Next showfloor, Kartick Sekar told us openness to a variety of databases is a key factor in cloud decisions that enterprises are now making. Sekar, who is Google Cloud solutions architect with consultancy and managed services provider Pythian, said built-in security and management features distinguish cloud vendors latest offerings.
When databases like PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQL Server become managed services on the cloud, he said, users don’t have to change their basic existing database technology.
This is not to say migrations occur without some changes. “There will always be a need for some level of due diligence to see if everything can be moved to the cloud,” Sekar said.
The view here is that plentiful options are becoming par for cloud. Google seems determined that no database will be left behind. Its update to its SQL Server support, particularly, bears watching, as its ubiquity is beyond dispute. – Jack Vaughan.
Read Google takes a run at enterprise cloud data management - SearchDataManagement.com
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