Cloud Computing on Database Management

¶ … Cloud Computing on Database Management

How Cloud-Based Technologies Are Impacting Database Technologies

Present Landscape

The current cloud computing landscape is crowded with a wide variety of technologies, software applications and databases that make the decision of which approach to take in analyzing it complex (Chisholm, 2009). The rapid growth in popularity of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has changed how companies manage their relationships with customers, making the use of databases for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) even more diverse (Limbasan, Rusu, 2011). The growing interest in legacy databases and the massive amount of information they have, called Big Data by analysts today (Chisholm, 2009) is also changing how companies access and use information. Databases are the center of the disruptive innovation and change in cloud computing today (Upson, 2011). The areas of technology most disrupted by these innovations include the security of distributed databases (McAfee, 2011), programming languages (Limbasan, Rusu, 2011), application development (Upson, 2011) and fault tolerance (Chisholm, 2009). Each of these areas is changing the structure and future development of databases to make them more usable throughout cloud computing platforms. IBM, Microsoft and Oracle are all investing millions of dollars a year in development of database technologies that can be used for selling cloud computing applications and services.

In addition, each of these software vendors is also investing in technologies to enable their databases to be used with 3rd party operating systems (McAfee, 2011). Relying on Web Services and XML, there is much focus on how to create database applications that can easily be used throughout an entire company without having to spend too much on new IT software (McAfee, 2011). The goal of these software vendors is to create a platform or means to integrate directly with other systems without costing too much, making these solutions affordable their customers will buy more (Upson, 2011).

The present landscape of databases used for cloud computing is also very much focused on application development. Salesforce.com for example with their Force.com platform is now being updated to make its development tools more efficient and easier to work with (McAfee, 2011). Current databases being used in cloud computing are being designed to make application development and programming more efficient and error-free, leading to more flexibility in the applications produced.

General Overview

The future of database technologies being developed and used today for cloud computing vary significantly from the existing systems available in several important ways. First, for cloud computing, databases need to have a higher level of security and stability as mainly are used in a multitenant configuration, which is the ability to share a single application across multiple users and accounts at the same time (Limbasan, Rusu, 2011). A multitenant application platform requires a much greater level of security and login access control than a typical database, as one a person is logged in, they can see all user accounts running from the software application (McAfee, 2011). Salesforce.com had a security breach where their multitenant databases could be seen by every customer online, so in essence every customer could see every other customers' information (Limbasan, Rusu, 2011). This was a turning point in how databases were designed for cloud computing, as greater security was needed to make sure multi-tenant applications did not break and provide unauthorized access to data online (Upson, 2011).

Another significant difference in databases built for cloud computing includes the development of more user-friendly programming languages (Chisholm, 2009). SQL is by far the most used programming language today for databases. The development of databases specifically for cloud computing have begun to include programming languages that include integration points within them including support for the XML communications protocol (McAfee, 2011). This is making it possible to get databases coordinated together more effectively in a cloud platform, allowing for more advanced forms of applications to be created. SQL continues to become more focused on how to create applications that can communicate across a wide variety of databases rather than just a few (Chisholm, 2009). This is a major shift in database technology, as many software vendors realize the success of their databases specifically built for this platform need to support robust, security integration.

Another major difference between the present database management technology and those being created for cloud computing is the level of disaster recovery and fault tolerance (Chisholm, 2009). Cloud computing applications often need to have a 99.999% uptime as customers use them directly over the Internet, and there is little chance of solving problems from a remote location (McAfee, 2011). As a result, databases used in cloud computing must have a very high level of reliability and be capable of managing small errors that would cause other databases to stop working or need to be rebooted. The requirement from cloud computing users for databases to be able to manage these higher levels of reliability is leading to a completely different level of research and development today (Limbasan, Rusu, 2011). Taking into account all of these factors it is clear that cloud computing is having a very disruptive effect on database research, development and use today. Cloud computing is forcing many enterprise software vendors who create databases to focus more on how their applications can be used as more than just an application. Today databases need to increasingly be used as a platform for development.

Assessing the Impact of Cloud Computing on Database Technologies

The rapid level of innovation and new product development by database software vendors to make their software applications more usable in cloud computing is also forcing a major change in how businesses uses these technologies as well. Larger businesses, often called enterprises, are using cloud computing databases to create their own internal or private cloud computing networks (Upson, 2011). This is having a major disruptive effect on how enterprises buy and pay for databases under maintenance contract agreements with the largest software companies including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and others (McAfee, 2011). Private cloud computing systems drastically reduce the cost of owning databases, and using a concept of virtualization, or the spare processing power in their servers, companies are able to save literally millions of dollars in costs (Limbasan, Rusu, 2011). The reduction in costs is very significant as a result. The benefits include much greater control over the administration of these private cloud sites suing databases that are much easier to maintain and secure, while also gaining experience in managing public clouds, or databases that their customers and members of their supply chain will use (McAfee, 2011).

IT Infrastructure Changes

The biggest infrastructure changes include actually reducing the number of servers and systems used for managing private cloud-based databases. There is also a reduction in costs for integrating databases and networks together as well. In addition to these changes, there is a major change going on in how companies manage their overall programming work and projects, making them much more focused on user needs instead of maintaining older databases. All of these changes are forcing an entirely new set of skills on businesses to learn and use.