The Database's Importance to Digital Transformation [Infographic]

75% of business product owners consider business agility to be the number one driver for strategic technology initiatives and 92% believe the database has a pivotal role to play in supporting such modernization efforts according to a new survey from NuoDB, an elastic SQL database for cloud applications. Given rapidly evolving customer expectations, organizations of every size, have no choice but to rethink how their strategies and infrastructure can support a culture of immediate gratification and this new era of digital transformation. 

With the increase in adoption of cloud architectures, containers, and microservices, the findings from more than 250 companies reveal a rising demand for a database that can deliver elastic scale while preserving both strict transactional consistency and a standard SQL interface. Even NoSQL users agree as 3 out of 4 consider strict consistency a vital component to their database system. 

For more insights view our survey highlights below or download our ebook.

Key Survey Findings

Business agility is job number one: Three out of 4 business product owners cite improving business agility as the number one driver for strategic technology initiatives. But agility isn’t just a business concern, 2 out of 3 technical team members also cited agility as a top-three business driver.

But agility does not equal revenue: Respondents noted that business agility wasn’t correlated with revenue or competitive differentiation. More than half ranked “Drive new revenue” as the single least important business driver for strategic initiatives, and 2 out of 3 ranked “competitive differentiation” in the bottom three.

The industry is divided on security and compliance: 25% ranked it as the top 1 or 2 business drivers for strategic technology initiatives, but nearly half (44%) cited it at the very bottom.

Performance reigns supreme: When selecting a database to support digital transformation efforts, 82% of respondents noted performance was “critical” or “very important” while availability was a close second at 78%.

SQL is the gold standard:  Despite the buzz around NoSQL, more than 60% only use relational databases. Furthermore, those who cited themselves as NoSQL users still value the tenets of a SQL database as 62% of firmly believe standard SQL support to be either “critical” or “very important”.

Containers and microservices are on the rise: No matter the type of database in consideration for strategic technology initiatives, nearly 75% of respondents are using or planning to use containers in the next 12 months.

“The ability to swiftly respond to changing customer demands is no longer a nice to have, but a necessity for business survival. Our findings underscore that developing a modern infrastructure to support digital transformation initiatives is not just a C-suite concern, but rather it is an imperative for line of business and technical professionals alike,” said Jeff Boehm, chief marketing officer at NuoDB. “As the analysis shows, the database is critical to the success of those initiatives and provides the flexible, scalable foundation organizations required to quickly deliver products and services in the face of today’s ever-evolving customer expectations.”