2020 Percona Survey Results Reveal the Latest Open Source Database Trends

At our recent Percona Live ONLINE we announced the release of the 2020 Open Source Data Management Software Survey results. 

This year, we wanted to build upon the data we collected in 2019 and continue to monitor the open source industry’s pulse. The 2020 survey was perhaps reflective of the wider world environment, as companies indicated a desire to consolidate their database infrastructure and software, avoid risk, and manage costs.

We asked a number of new questions, as well as comparing 2019 data. One of the headline findings is that database footprints and Database as a Service (DBaaS) continues to grow, but that many companies are facing unexpected cloud bills.

According to the results, the cost of cloud computing was flagged as a problem for many companies, with 22% of organizations facing additional unplanned costs from their cloud providers.

The share of companies using DBaaS increased to 45% of respondents compared to 40% the previous year. More than half of large companies (56%) indicated that they use DBaaS, and, in-line with the trend of companies looking to mitigate their risk, around half of the total large company category used more than one DBaaS service.

The survey also revealed a number of other interesting data points:

Decisions on open source database choice are centralizing

• Architects are now the primary group in charge of making database deployment decisions, according to 41% of respondents.
• The next group is developers with 26%. So, although many developers remain responsible for their organizations’ technology choices, this is starting to consolidate based on the need to manage support and management overheads.

 

 

Database footprints continue to grow

• 82% of organizations saw their database footprint grow more than 5% per year.
• For 12% of organizations, the volume of data they held doubled or more in twelve months.

 

 

 

Upgrading cloud instances is a common occurrence

• Around 28% required two to three upgrades, while 21% had more than ten upgrades.
• Just 12% of organizations made no changes to their instances.

 

 

 

Cloud spending and planning gave mixed results

• Around 22% found that their cloud spending was above expected, while 60% found their cloud spending was about right. For 17%, their cloud spend was lower than expected.

 

 

 

What keeps you up at night?

• This year, we dug deeper into the issues that companies face in their environments and their biggest database management concerns. When asking, ‘what keeps you up at night?’ the most significant issues flagged were downtime (59%) and performance (51%), along with the concern of fixing emergency issues (35%).
• Performance issues were by far the biggest experienced issue for nearly three-quarters of respondents at 74%, with unplanned downtime impacting 45%.

Given the negative impact that performance issues and downtime has on businesses, this reiterates how crucial it is to ensure that your databases are correctly configured and optimized.

Huge thanks to everyone who gave their input and helped contribute to the success of this project. 

Visit our website to view the full 2020 results and see a comparison with 2019 figures.