Document #US45976520 © 2020 IDC. www.idc.com | Page 15
IDC White Paper | Amazon Relational Database Service Delivers Enhanced Database Performance at Lower Total Cost
CHALLENGES/OPPORTUNITIES
AWS is the largest public cloud services platform available. Many enterprises have chosen to
deploy their applications on AWS, and many ISVs have developed software-as-a-service (SaaS)
applications to run on AWS. It is certainly both attractive and practical for enterprises that
have applications on AWS, and that use SaaS offerings on AWS, to manage their data using
AWS-managed RDBMSs. This fact gives RDS a major advantage in the marketplace.
A key challenge comes from the argument, made by some, that one's RDBMS should be
independent of the cloud services platform so that data can be moved elsewhere in a
seamless manner if desired. AWS needs to make people comfortable that their data is portable
and can be easily migrated or replicated between the AWS cloud and other environments. The
opportunity is for AWS to prove that the benefits derived from managing all applications and
databases in one environment clearly outweigh other options. At the same time, continuous
innovation by AWS should ensure its continued dominance in this space.
CONCLUSION
Organizations must find approaches to delivering database services to their businesses
that match and complement their overall cloud strategies. Many enterprises are opting for
cloud-native applications designed to maximize available cloud resources while minimizing
continuous utilization, thereby optimizing their costs, making it logical that they also look for
a cloud-native database service. Amazon RDS is a database service designed to enable setting
up, operating, and scaling cloud-based relational databases for organizations pursuing this
type of cloud-native approach.
IDC's study demonstrates the strong value that organizations can achieve by running various
database workloads and engines in Amazon RDS. This value relates to cost and operational
efficiencies as well as business and operational benefits tied to improved database agility,
scalability, and performance. With Amazon RDS, organizations spend less to run equivalent
database workloads; benefit from better use of DBA, IT, and developer time; and suffer lower
business operational losses from database-related outages. Overall, IDC projects that study
participants will realize average annual benefits worth $4.99 million per organization ($37,400
per Amazon RDS database), which would result in a three-year return on investment of 264%
through their use of Amazon RDS databases in the AWS cloud.
