Hey, are you available?

“Life is available only in the present moment.”

- Thich Nhat Hanh

Early in my career, I worked in product management for a Fortune 500 tech company that no longer exists. I was always “on,” always available. I’d write product descriptions, figure out pricing, and think through competitive positioning into the wee hours while watching sporting events or old WWII movies. All while sending (spamming?) email 24/7. I didn’t get much sleep back then and, as I found later, I developed a reputation for being something of a nuisance. I never liked that job much.

The “always on” availability of a person might actually leave something to be desired, but the 24/7 availability of certain applications is nearly universally sought. And the availability of the supporting storage systems significantly affects the availability of the applications. It’s challenging to offer a satisfactory customer experience (CX) if one or more customer-facing applications are down. Poor CX directly impacts customer retention—it’s very expensive. According to FPS, for banks, the cost of acquiring new customers is 5 times the rate of retaining existing ones. And author Frederick Reichheld notes in The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value that as little as a 5% reduction in customer churn can boost net profits by as much as 20%. That’s a lot of money.

So, given the role of Oracle applications and databases in not just facilitating the day-to-day operations of a company but also in affecting customer retention, it’s interesting to see how businesses ensure their availability. The 2022 Quest IOUG Database Insights Report states that only 26% of the respondents report using Oracle Data Guard (included with the Enterprise Edition of Oracle Database) or Advanced Data Guard to ensure business continuity. If you’ve paid for the Enterprise Edition of Oracle Database, why wouldn’t you use what’s already included?

Perhaps less surprising is that most businesses use some form of Oracle RAC (either single data center or “stretched”) to address business continuity requirements. Another thing that catches the eye is that enterprises are using multiple methods to ensure business continuity--the total percentages in the survey add up to 247%. This is probably driven by the likelihood of heterogenous environments. Meaning that there are a lot of non-Oracle applications on Oracle databases.

NetApp^® knows a thing or two about availability. NetApp also knows that you judge the vendors that support your Oracle, SAP, and SQL Server environments by more than a single metric. That’s why NetApp supports these environments with comprehensive automation capabilities, application integration to speed database deployment, and arguably the industry’s most mature hybrid cloud offerings. Oh, and six 9s availability of course. Don’t take our word for it. See what IDC has to say.