3 Oracle DBA Strategic Responsibilities to Outsource for Maximum Business Value

3 Oracle DBA Strategic Responsibilities to Outsource for Maximum Business Value

by | Aug 5, 2014 | Database Architecture, Oracle DBA

Many organizations have limited their Oracle DBA outsourcing to tactical/operational functions like monitoring, backup and patching. But the changing technology landscape is transforming the DBA role and requiring greater expertise.

Today’s enterprise data stores are increasingly massive and architecturally complex. They must support e-commerce and other critical applications that are web-based and demand continuous availability, on-demand scalability, robust security, maximum performance and mobile device support. Further, more and more of the data that drives these complex, critical applications reside in the cloud.

To meet these new demands, organizations of all sizes increasingly need strategic Oracle DBA capabilities in addition to tactical DBA roles. But it can be hard to hire and retain expert Oracle DBAs with these skills, especially when IT budgets are constrained and the skills are in short supply.

In this increasingly common scenario, outsourcing expert Oracle DBA skills to a trusted, onshore partner can be a lifesaver. Not only can you potentially save money, but also you can improve the availability, security and business value of your most valuable asset—your data. This can give you an edge in the marketplace by improving decision-making, shortening time-to-market for new applications and delivering better performance and service to customers.

What strategic Oracle DBA services should you consider outsourcing? Start with the capabilities that are the most in demand, the hardest to cultivate in-house and offer the greatest benefit. These three will top the list for many organizations:

One: Data integration

Big data and analytics are all about integrating multiple data sources to streamline access while reducing management and storage complexity. At many companies data is siloed, making it difficult to get a comprehensive view of the business. When competitors are successfully leveraging more accurate and comprehensive intelligence, can your business afford not to take these steps? Hiring an expert Oracle DBA consultant can reduce cost, risk and time-to-value.

Two: Database architecture and design

Virtualization, cloud services and clustering offer new ways to derive greater value from existing infrastructure investments. An expert Oracle DBA can help you design and implement a massively scalable and available database system that meets the dynamic needs of a global business. The ability to understand, articulate and address the requirements of both the business and its customers is key to this strategic role.

Three: Cloud services

Setting up, managing and scaling an Oracle RDBMS in the cloud takes more than basic capacity planning and administration. It requires a database that has been properly architected and performance tuned to deal with cloud’s challenges—especially security and compliance. This is perhaps more obvious in regulated industries where compliance concerns are paramount, but many businesses moving data to the cloud face comparable concerns.

There’s a lot of buzz these days about making your business “data driven.” Highly experienced senior database professionals will be key to moving in that direction, and they’re in increasingly short supply. Contact Buda Consulting to discuss your Oracle DBA strategy and needs.

 

Is Your Oracle DBA a Big Data DBA? 3 Key Skills Can Help.

Is Your Oracle DBA a Big Data DBA? 3 Key Skills Can Help.

by | Jul 28, 2014 | Oracle DBA

Does your organization have key Oracle DBA skills that can help you to derive value from big data? And what is “big data” anyhow? Does it just relate to big (like petabyte-sized) databases? Or is there more to it?

Besides being simply “big,” big data has two other key attributes:

  • It can also include a heterogeneous mix of structured and unstructured data types, and
  • It tends to come at you hard and fast!

The business challenge with big data is to figure out which data elements within the big data “deluge” are of value to you, and how to most effectively capture and analyze those elements. As the volume of available data grows and the number and types of questions the business wants to ask also expands, new “big data administration” skills also come into play.

An expert Oracle DBA can help with harnessing big data by creating efficient ways to make critical data available to business processes. As I see it, three emerging “key skills” are especially useful in this regard: integration, reporting and Hadoop.

One: Integration

Perhaps the most vital “big data DBA” skill set involves integrating data from a wide range of sources. In the case of big data, successful integrations look beyond mechanics to understand what the business needs, what problem(s) it is looking to solve, and why the data has potential value. Effective communication with business stakeholders is key to success in this area. Oracle Big Data Connectors can help by making it easier to acquire and pre-process data with Apache Hadoop and perform integrated analysis within Oracle Database.

Two: Reporting

“Big data DBAs” also face new challenges with reporting and data visualization. Finding the nuggets of gold within the big data rubble pile means developing reports that can be efficiently and effectively analyzed by business stakeholders, often across multiple parameters and with different goals in mind. Points of focus here include creating the appropriate data structures, and maintaining satisfactory performance. Tuning queries for specific reporting functions means going beyond typical DBA activities to deeply understand the business context and match business needs to the different visualization and reporting tools you have available.

Three: Hadoop

Apache Hadoop is an open-source software framework for storing and processing large-scale datasets across clusters of inexpensive servers running in parallel. Hadoop is a robust and highly scalable platform that enables businesses to run applications against petabytes of data. Hadoop also facilitates cost-effective storage and fast, flexible querying of both structured and unstructured data sources. It’s designed to enable companies to store “all” their data for later processing. Big data DBAs are getting into Hadoop in a big way, because there are multiple ways for Oracle shops to leverage Hadoop-based data and integrate it with Oracle Database for maximum benefit.

Of course, each organization will have unique challenges and opportunities when working with big data. Proper project planning and database design will be central to success and rapid time-to-value. Contact Buda Consulting to talk about how we can support your business as it moves to embrace big data.