Databases sit at the heart of an organization’s business systems, and a large part of safeguarding the integrity and reliability of those systems depends on proper maintenance and administration of those databases. Perhaps because of this importance, outsourcing database administration is not among the most-popular outsourced functions.
While some organizations might be worried about outsourcing such an important function, customers report overall positive results when they do outsource it. Figure 4 from our study, Database Administration Outsourcing Trends and Customer Experience, shows that 66% of organizations report a successful cost experience.
 
The role of the database administrator requires special skills, including data modeling, metadata management, and backup and recovery. At the same time, database administrators are segmenting themselves into specialty areas, such as data warehousing and performance tuning. Because of the complexities, companies can struggle to find DBA talent with enough experience to fulfill all the responsibilities of the position. These factors are putting more pressure on database administrators and could soon lead to more outsourcing in this area.
“Databases are getting more complex, and the right DBA skills can be hard to find,” said Tom Dunlap, Research Director for Computer Economics. “While database administration outsourcing is still not a widely embraced strategy, we expect that to change in the coming years.”
To help IT executives understand their options, the full study examines adoption trends in database administration outsourcing. We report on the percentage of organizations outsourcing database administration (frequency), the average amount of work outsourced (level), and the change in the amount of work being outsourced (trend). We also present success rates for the cost and service experience. Finally, we show how these trends differ by organization size and sector.
This Research Byte is based on our report on this subject, Database Outsourcing Trends and Customer Experience. The full report is available at no charge for Computer Economics clients, or it may be purchased by non-clients directly from our website (click for pricing).
 
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