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Outsourcing Can Provide Deep Expertise for Special IT Projects

Author: Robin Caputo | | April 8, 2014

Considering the ever-expanding variety of platforms and tools available to database administrators, it’s no surprise that not all enterprises have people on staff with the experience needed to effectively, efficiently tackle those new technologies.

The ability to have deep expertise in those areas — as well as other projects your in-house staff might need help with — is a prime motivation for organizations to leverage resources available from managed services providers, according to Noel Yuhanna, principal analyst at Forrester Consulting.

Datavail — one of the largest providers of remote database administration services in North America — commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate the viability of a managed service approach to database administration. The survey found that the ability to access deep expertise for implementing new technologies and launching special projects is one reason that convinces IT professionals to use outsourcing to remain effective and productive.

Lack of Qualified IT Staff

Although the number of databases in organizations has doubled or quadrupled in the past decade, the study found, the number of database administrators has not kept pace. An estimated 71 percent of organizations reported they lack the staff needed to manage their enterprise databases.

This lack of staffing is also hindering innovation and business growth, according to Forrester analysts’ findings. Outsourcing lets organizations fill gaps in their existing staffs. It provides IT executives with strategic flexibility in hiring because they can call upon outsourcing vendors for needed expertise and specialized skills. This helps enterprises with tasks such as supporting new application development, or projects that need staff with extremely specific database skill sets for a limited period.

Critical Role of Databases

“As data is becoming a critical asset to organizations, databases are getting more focus today than ever before,” says Yuhanna. “Databases are critical for business intelligence, for analytics, for predictive analytics — data is running the whole business today. Organizations are putting more emphasis on databases than ever before.”

Outsourcing doesn’t just help with the latest technologies and programming languages, but can also fill staffing gaps for maintaining legacy, mainframe databases.

“Whether you are running DOS, VSAM, or VMS … all these databases still require support. In fact there are more than 11,000 customers worldwide running databases on mainframes today.” He adds “No one is actually pulling the plug on these environments because they are still mission-critical for the organization and will still be running on mainframes in the next five to 10 years.”

Datavail’s President and CEO, Mark Perlstein says the accelerating increase in the variety, velocity, and volume of data and databases — as well as the scarcity of DBA talent — makes this an ideal time to consider an alternative approach to managing databases.

Organizations don’t have to plunge in to outsourcing by immediately relinquishing all their database administration, says Yuhanna. They can start by having a managed service provider work with a few databases to determine the value outsourcing might bring.

How might such an outsourced database management strategy augment and complement your organization’s existing staff? To access the full study, visit Outsourcing Database Administration Saves Money, Improves IT Productivity. You can also listen to a webinar in which Yuhanna and Perlstein explain this and other benefits by visiting Five Reasons to Choose a Managed Services Approach to Database Administration.

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