IBM Software Database strategies for the world of big data

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Introduction 3

Strategize the future 5

Invest to handle data growth 7

Accelerate answers to business questions 9

Keep data systems up and running 11

Reduce complexity to enhance productivity 13

The right strategic investment 15

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Introduction Strategize the future

Invest to handle data growth

Accelerate answers to business questions Keep data systems up and running Reduce complexity to enhance productivity The right strategic investment

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The rapid rise and ubiquity of mobile and social applications are stimulating increased levels of interaction and creating an explosion of new data. Existing systems are struggling to keep pace with this data growth, and in many cases

At the same time, these changes are creating opportunity. The advent of big data technologies makes it possible to obtain deeper insights from this data to accelerate decision making and improve business productivity.

Introduction

Introduction

Planning database investments requires an understanding of your organization’s growth— both business growth and data growth—and the demands of your user community.

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Big data: Growing up, fast

Organizations are analyzing massive amounts of data collected from the Internet, sensors and mobile devices, and trying to make sense of it all relative to the large amount of traditional data that already resides within the organization. In fact, according to the NewVantage Partners “Big Data Executive Survey 2013,” the areas of most interest for big data were customer transaction data, financial data, market data and behavioral data.1

To get the most out of these data domains, organizations must mine existing data or gain new insight from external data in the context of data they already have. They must keep enterprise data at the heart of big data initiatives.

What does it mean for you?

Put it all together, and it’s clear your business needs a cost-effective database solution that can help you manage data growth and tap into the insights locked within big data. Now you need a strategy for getting there.

Introduction

USD14

billion

IDC predicts worldwide 2014 spending on big data technologies and services will grow by 30 percent, exceeding USD14 billion.

IDC predicts that over the next three years, 80 percent or more of the new “killer apps” emerging on the 3rd Platform will be “data intensive”—they will leverage huge volumes of data and/or real-time data streams.

Source: IDC. “IDC Predictions 2014: Battles for Dominance—and Survival—on the 3rd Platform.” December 2013, IDC #244606.

30

%

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Strategize the future

You probably already have several databases that have grown and evolved over many years. As your systems approached their limits, you’ve added more servers, more storage and more licenses. But each expansion or change adds complexity—complexity that consumes more IT resources to keep systems running at peak performance.

You hear a lot these days about in-memory and columnar technologies—they are just what you need for driving high levels of performance and flattening the cost curve. You’ll also require a database that is highly available, cloud-ready, mobile-friendly, secure and works well with the new generation of applications.

Strategize the future

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Strategize the future

Where will you get the most bang for your database buck? Which investments will deliver in the short term and also set up your company for long-term success?

To start, ask yourself a few questions:

• Can your present systems handle your

projected data growth?

• Are you meeting SLAs for availability

and performance?

• Do you take advantage of emerging

technologies that can improve the

productivity of your business users? If you struggle with any of these questions, _{this e-book is for you. It outlines some of the}

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Invest to handle data growth

Data volumes are growing exponentially and are likely to double every two years through 2020. New, raw data is arriving every day from a multitude of sources. Transactional data is growing fast, but unstructured data is growing even faster.

Here are key capabilities for meeting the data growth challenge:

Scalable architecture: Make this growth

work for your organization. Invest in scalable database technology that empowers your organization to gain competitive advantage by efficiently capturing, storing and processing data from the expanding digital universe.

IDC predicts that in 2014, the size of the “Digital Universe”—all digitized information created, replicated and consumed in a year—will continue to explode, growing by 50 percent to about 6 billion terabytes, driven by the explosion in mobile devices, apps, social media and the Internet of Things.

6 billion terabytes

50

%

Source: IDC. “IDC Predictions 2014: Battles for Dominance—and Survival—on the 3rd Platform.” December 2013, IDC #244606.

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Compression, compression, compression:

Compression lets you use fewer bits to store information by reducing repeating patterns of data down to smaller amounts of encoded information. Advanced compression techniques compress the data objects as well as indexes, table spaces, logs and other data. Some compression technologies go even further by allowing queries to perform against compressed data. This not only cuts down the amount of storage needed for the data, but it also helps speed up query performance by reducing the amount of data that may need to be moved and

by avoiding decompression overhead.

Top investments for data growth

• Scalable architecture to handle

growing data volume, variety and velocity

• Data compression to reduce

storage requirements

• Automated storage tiering to

balance storage costs and performance

Take advantage of tiered storage: Keep

your databases running lean and trim by automatically migrating less frequently accessed data off high-cost memory or storage and onto less-expensive media. Tiered storage helps you absorb more data and maintain high performance without breaking your IT budget. Look for a database that utilizes multi-temperature data management techniques—which manage data based on frequency of use—to help you optimize your storage investments.

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Accelerate answers to business questions

More data, more users and more queries can bring a database to its knees—but it doesn’t have to. Databases built to handle the

demands of the big data era not only have to deliver faster responses to individual queries, but must scale to process high numbers of queries without taking a performance hit. Performance no longer has to suffer as data volume and the number of users grows. In addition to the performance gains from data compression and multi-temperature data management, you can keep up with high-performance demands through a combination of technologies and process improvements such as these:

Data skipping: Not every query is going to

need every bit of data, so doesn’t it make sense to skip over the data you know you don’t need? Data-skipping technology does just that, speeding up answers by using only

Massive parallel processing: Once unnecessary data is skipped, wouldn’t it be nice to then split the remaining data into many smaller subsets and run the same query against each subset in parallel? That’s exactly what parallel processing does, and it can dramatically increase response times— especially for large queries.

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Scalable clustering: Clustering can be used

to scale systems up or down to match changing workload demands such as peak buying seasons or special promotions. Remember, though: not all database

architectures allow seamless and transparent scaling. Look for a database that shields the application programmers from needing to know the underlying cluster and data topology.

Optimize systems for mixed workloads: As

analytic requests and data stores grow more diverse, mixed workloads are becoming increasingly common. This means you need a database platform that is designed for both transactional and analytics workloads, and incorporates technologies that help prioritize queries from users and applications and manage resource allocation accordingly.

Top performance-boosting strategies

• Data skipping to use only data

that’s needed for the query

• Parallel processing that runs

each query in multiple parallel threads

• Transparent scalable clustering

that adjusts to dynamic workload requirements

• Mixed workload support for

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Keep data systems up and running

Ensure business continuity

Businesses today can’t operate without information—not even for a second. 24x7 availability is expected, and customers and employees demand fast (if not real-time) responses. You need to ensure that your organization’s database systems remain up and running to avoid loss of data and minimize any

Any number of things can cause downtime, from hardware and software failures and planned maintenance to system overload and natural disasters. You must plan to avoid downtime, whether it’s expected or not. These three capabilities can help.

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High availability: Your solution should have

built-in redundant components so that no single component failure causes the entire system to go down. The database management software must also support a high-availability architecture and have the reliability to deliver “always on” data services.

Clustering technology: By clustering together

multiple database nodes that access the same data, you can reduce or eliminate downtime if a node fails. A cluster environment can be quite complex to design and deploy, but some database software and pre-integrated systems can help simplify and automate much of the design, deployment and management for you by using pre-configured patterns and settings.

Top investments for business continuity

• High-availability architecture, including redundant components • Clustering to automatically

detect and recover from failed database nodes

• Disaster recovery features and processes to provide

seamless failover, even to a remote location

Keep data systems up and running

Backup and disaster recovery: What if a

natural disaster wipes out your primary data center or the power feeding it? To keep your applications running, you will need to

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Reduce complexity to enhance productivity

The more complex the system, the more time and attention required to meet uptime and performance SLAs. Many data centers are now so complex that administrators can’t be as productive as they were in the past.

Don’t fall into the complexity trap. Your database solution must be quick to set up, simple to manage on an ongoing basis and compatible with the applications that are critical to your business. Make sure your database includes automation and compatibility capabilities, and you’ll find that your DBAs, system administrators and application developers spend less time on mundane tasks—leaving them available to tackle your next big data project.

Simplify deployment: Look for technologies

that keep setup and deployment simple: Eliminate as much complex data modeling, index and aggregate creation and management, and other resource-intensive processes that

Make it automatic: Storage resource

management, backups, performance tuning, memory tuning and workload optimization are labor-intensive and time-consuming. Automating tasks such as memory allocation, table

reorganization and monitoring not only saves time and money for IT, but also helps boost productivity for business users by proactively

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Ensure application compatibility: SQL, the

programming language used by all relational database management system (RDBMS) products, has many strengths—but code migration isn’t one of them. Most databases address this limitation with SQL extensions (which may be proprietary) or with conversions that need manual intervention and are therefore prone to errors and slowdowns. Check the SQL compatibility percentages and be sure you build a system that can absorb your current

applications with a minimum of manual work.

Get the right tools: When evaluating a

database, find out what tools are available with it. The big data era calls for a strong toolset, including data lifecycle management tools to keep data in the right place and accessible by the right people; test management tools to prevent privacy breaches and support

development team collaboration; recovery tools to get databases and applications back up and running; and embedded analytics capabilities to help you make sense of all that data.

Use database-as-a-service: DaaS gives

you capacity on demand through a cloud implementation. This means your organization can shift expenses from CapEx to OpEx, and IT can innovate and build applications faster because they no longer need to deploy on-site test and development environments.

Productivity-building features

• Simple setup accelerates

deployments

• Autonomics helps tune and

manage the system without human intervention

• Compatibility reduces the need

for additional skills training

• Comprehensive tools boost IT productivity • Database-as-a-service (DaaS) enables the

flexibility you need to adjust to changing business requirements

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The right strategic investment

The world of data is changing. That creates challenges, but it also represents a gold mine for your organization. More data from more sources is available for uncovering business insights and gaining competitive advantage—if you have the right database capabilities.

IBM® DB2® database software is designed to help you make the most of this opportunity while positioning your company for the future. It incorporates modern database

technologies for managing data growth, accelerating performance, ensuring business continuity and increasing productivity, and it gives you the flexibility you need to handle both transactional and analytics workloads. At the same time, DB2 can lower your total cost of ownership by helping to reduce the IT resources required for setup, operation, management and maintenance.

DB2 also offers a choice of deployment options to fit your specific environment and strategic direction. It is available as a software offering to give you the highest levels of flexibility within your hardware, operating system and middleware environment, and it is embedded within expert integrated systems to provide appliance-style simplicity out of the box. Plus, it is cloud-ready to deliver DaaS in both private and public cloud environments.

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IBM DB2: Maximize your database

investments

• A next-generation database platform with optimized support for transactional, operational and deep analytic workloads for future-proof versatility

• Advanced in-memory columnar technology with Actionable Compression and CPU acceleration techniques to deliver speed-of-thought analytics • Leading NoSQL, SQL and mobile database

capabilities for greater application support and big data flexibility

• High availability and disaster recovery features to support always-available transactions

• Load-and-go simplicity, autonomics and transparent scalability to help accelerate deployments and enhance the productivity of IT staff and application developers

• Average 98 percent compatibility with Oracle PL/SQL for easier database conversions without investing in new skills2

Resources

Invest a little time comparing database solutions, and you’ll discover it’s not too difficult to identify the right data management investment for your company. Here are some resources to help you get started:

• IBM DB2 for Linux, UNIX and Windows

• IBM BLU Acceleration Hub

• Online assessment tool:

Which edition of DB2 is right for you?

• Modernize Your Data Management System

for Big Data

• Interactive online tool: Future-Proof Your

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