New 451 Research Report: Distributed SQL

Today, we are releasing a new 451 Research report: Distributed SQL, An Enabler for Globally Consistent Transactional Workloads. The report, which we commissioned, explores how database systems, sitting at the heart of the enterprise, play a key role in digital transformation initiatives.

At Yugabyte, we partner with our customers daily to help accelerate their digital initiatives, and we get a front-row seat as their business-critical applications scale to billions and billions of operations per day, powered by our cloud native, open source distributed SQL database.

But we wanted to dig deeper and explore how companies at all stages of digital transformation–execution, evaluation, consideration, or even no current strategy–are thinking about database systems, and share the trends and insights we uncovered with the broader community.

By partnering with 451 Research, we were able to gather real-world insights from more than 500 enterprises on how they are approaching digital transformation, what they expect now and in the future in terms of data models, data platforms, and where they are running or plan to run transactional workloads. Plus, 451 Research adds concrete next steps for decision-makers seeking to match their data platform systems with cloud native infrastructure.

With that, below are some of the highlights from the report. If you’d like to dive into the full research, you can download your complimentary copy of the report here.

Report Highlights

• 70% of enterprises are currently undergoing digital transformation activities and 55% of IT professionals hope to gain operational efficiency from their data platforms as a result of these effort
• The vast majority of respondents are leveraging and plan to leverage the relational data model, which requires SQL, for transactional operational workloads now and in two years’ time
• 70% of transactional workloads run on-premises and 30% run in the cloud, but the ratio is expected to change with on-premises transactional workloads dropping to 48% and cloud moving up to 52% over a two-year period
• 68.2% of respondents agree that multi-cloud and hybrid cloud will be a significant investment focus going forward for their enterprises

Example Excerpts

“With digital transformation initiatives, organizations must deliberately move away from outdated thinking, processes, technology and methods in favor of more modern, agile practices.”

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“For enterprises looking to transform their database systems, digitally transforming means more than getting the latest version or update; it may require a new database architecture–one that is highly scalable, fault tolerant, cloud-based and globally distributed.”

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“One of the expected changes for transactional systems will be where they run. Historically, transactional systems have run on-premises, but research points to cloud as the primary location of transactional workloads going forward. But getting to the cloud can be a complex journey, especially when organizations are looking to transition legacy applications and systems. The fact is, simply ‘lifting and shifting’ to the cloud could have long-term ramifications because the data platforms and applications have not been optimized to fully leverage cloud infrastructure, and would thus not run in an optimized state.”

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“Ideally, enterprises need to take the long view and seek to match their data platform systems with cloud-native infrastructure. To that end, there are relational database technologies that have been specifically developed and architected to run natively in the cloud, taking advantage of the inherent characteristics of all that the cloud offers. Such characteristics include heterogeneous commodity infrastructure, near-instant elasticity, the promise of unlimited capacity and the ability to deploy across multiple datacenters around the globe. Research suggests that when enterprises can find maximum value from their investments—digital transformative initiatives, for instance—they can benefit and run their organizations with optimal operational efficiency.”

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Download the full report for free to explore digital transformation, data platform transformation, the range of considerations as workloads move to the cloud, and concrete next steps in the decision-making process.

About the Author

James Curtis is a Senior Analyst for the Data, AI & Analytics Channel at 451 Research. He has had experience covering the BI reporting and analytics sector and currently covers Hadoop, NOSQL and related analytic and operational database technologies.

About 451 Research

451 Research is a leading information technology research and advisory company focusing on technology innovation and market disruption. More than 100 analysts and consultants provide essential insight into more than 1,000 client organizations globally through a combination of syndicated research and data, advisory and go-to-market services, and live events. Founded in 2000, 451 Research is a part of S&P Global Market Intelligence.