Couchbase Inc. has unfurled a revamped database-as-a-service (DBaaS) platform dubbed Couchbase Capella hosted on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.
Scott Anderson, senior vice president for product management for Couchbase, said that as application development continues to evolve, it’s becoming apparent more organizations prefer to have providers of databases manage those platforms on their behalf. That approach frees up database administrators (DBAs) to spend more of their time building and deploying applications, he noted.
Couchbase Capella is based on Couchbase Server 7, which added multi-statement SQL transactions capabilities to the document database, based on a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format, to make it possible to also run in microseconds transaction processing applications that previously would have required a relational database to process SQL ACID transactions.
That release of Couchbase Server 7 also added schema and table-like organizing structures, called “scopes and collections,” within the schemaless database to make it possible to add a table while transactions are running.
As a document database Couchbase has gained traction mainly thanks to developers who have opted to employ a database they could download and deploy themselves to build applications instead of requiring a DBA to set up a relational database. However, as the number of instances of a document database proliferates, a need to manage them across fleets of servers and cloud services has emerged.
The challenge then becomes determining whether to hire a dedicated administer or employ a DBaaS managed by a vendor. Many organizations are opting for the DBaaS approach because it eliminates the need to hire a full-time administrator. Once an organization opts for the DBaaS approach, however, it next needs to integrate that service within its DevOps workflow to build those applications.
There is, of course, no shortage of options when it comes to DBaaS platforms. The global cloud database and DBaaS market size is expected to reach $26 billion by 2025, according to a report from Adroit Market Research. Overall, the as-a-service market reached a record $13.4 billion in the third quarter, up 55% from prior year, according to a report published by Information Services Group (ISG).
It’s not clear to what degree organizations will ultimately wind up relying on as-a-service platforms, but since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the shift to this approach to consuming IT resources has increased significantly. As a result, the way internal IT teams are organized is shifting as lower-level tasks are either automated or handled by an external IT team that works for a vendor.
Regardless of approach, the amount of data being created and analyzed within organizations is only going to grow. Organizations will need to determine to what degree it makes sense for them to manage that data versus relying on an external services provider. The challenge, of course, when relying on an external service provider isn’t just technical; it introduces a new cultural dynamic that takes some time for many IT teams to appreciate fully.
