Data is the lifeblood of your business, which means taking care of it is essential for operating your business. Whether your company uses SQL Server, Oracle, Db2, or PostgreSQL, quality database support, maintenance, and protection must be an integral part of your business plan.
Finding the right partner to maintain your system is not enough; instead, finding a partner you can trust to make sure your database is secure and operating at peak performance is the premier directive. Whoever your business turns to for ongoing database administration (DBA) support needs to be an extension of your team. And that’s the game-changer: it changes the criteria from a vendor that offers DBA services to one that can maintain a relationship over time and on-demand with you and your team.
Searching for a long-term partner means there’s a lot more to consider than just product and service offerings. So, when shopping for DBA services and selecting a vendor, there are ten key considerations for you to evaluate.
1. Provider Capabilities
- Evaluate the provider company’s experience, stability, and expertise around your specific needs to guarantee they can meet each requirement.
2. Breadth of Expertise
- Understand the breadth of expertise available through assigned DBAs: architecture, design, administration, monitoring, troubleshooting, etc.
3. Access to Experts
- Analyze the vendor’s access to experts in various database technologies and other technologies, particularly as it relates to your IT environment and infrastructure. You may find a vendor can offer more support and expertise to benefit your organization beyond database services.
4. Ability to Deliver
- Review the provider’s ability to meet and deliver your company’s on-demand needs (including DB monitoring and alerting) 24/7.
5. Issue Resolution
- Assess how the vendor typically handles historical downtime, as well as average issue resolution time, and other pertinent scenarios and solutions. You’ll want your database in good hands no matter the situation.
6. Assigned DBA
- Evaluate how well the assigned DBA knows your IT environment, and guarantee you have direct access to that DBA around the clock.
7. Off-time Support
- In addition to routine services, make sure the provider can augment DBA staff as needed for off-time support and maintenance.
8. Consistent Performance
- Assess the provider’s ability to deliver proactive performance management, administrative tasks, and essential duties.
9. Trusted Guidance
- Determine the vendor’s capability to recommend actions and strategies for maintaining and enhancing DB functionality, uptime, application performance, and scalability.
10. Flexibility
- Explore the vendor’s flexibility in customizing solutions to fit your budget and business needs as well as the ability to provide on-demand support and consultation.
Naturally, XTIVIA meets each of these considerations and is committed to delivering on them as your trusted technology partner. For more than 20 years, our clients have relied on our database experts to provide outstanding DBA services with plans that exceed their expectations. Even more, our expertise expands far beyond traditional database management, deep into the depths of database services, including professional DBA consultation, managed IT services, Data Warehousing (DW), Business Intelligence (BI), Data Strategy, Data Governance, Master Data Management, App Dev, software licensing, cloud services, and more.
Ultimately, we aim to deliver the best database services in the industry. There are numerous ways we can step in to guarantee your business has the necessary database support and technology solutions. Whatever platform or software your company uses, our commitment is to support you in reaching your business targets by servicing your systems, IT environment, and applications with our expertise. For more information, feel free to reach out to us via the comments below or contact us here.
Download Our Factors in Choosing DBA Services Checklist
This post was originally published here.