Who's managing your Databases?

Can any task in an enterprise be deemed less glamorous than Database Administration? While critical to be sure, this important task has become relegated a ‘non critical’ function in most organizations. At the same time, the DBA position sees higher than usual staff turnover, and is often used as a training ground for under skilled junior talent. At times lumped in with general Systems Administration (usually related to core operating systems and/or middleware or application support), this is typically one of the first functions looked at for outsourcing, or sent to offshore teams to manage.

Managing a patch schedule, combined with routine ‘care and feeding’ (database tuning, fixing lock outs, and the like) breaks this skill down into a combination of routine day to day tasks, separate from ‘project work’ like upgrades, or working with application teams where needed.

A recent search of Dice’s job board showed a total of 2,190 job openings with DBA in the title.   That’s over two thousand!   Where will all this talent come from?   Simply put it won’t come from anywhere.   It will come, in many cases, by partnering with companies like TxMQ to provide DBA staffing or support.

There is simply a mismatch in the market place today between needed talent, and available talent, oftentimes this is due to geography (the talent isn’t where the jobs are), but this talent deficit is mostly based on the fact that these are positions that simply experience higher than average turnover. In short it’s hard to find the right people for the job.

We have found that by combining near shore talent in inexpensive regions of the US like Buffalo, NY, our corporate home (and according to a major publication, the most economically advantageous place to live in the US), with available offshore talent if needed, we can offer up to 24x7x365 DBA services on all major databases.   DB2, Oracle, SQL, even open source products like MySql can be supported, and on all platforms, including cloud platforms.

TxMQ can take over entire teams of existing DBAs, offer supplemental coverage for ‘surge’ needs like retail holiday season, or tax season, or cover long term leave of absences brought about by illness, maternity, or for any other reason.

TxMQ can offer a team approach to support for less than the cost of an in house DBA in nearly all cases.

For companies with severe security concerns, we also have professionals with multiple government clearances as well.

Companies covered by our support, also receive discounted Statement of Work services rates for non covered items like project work, migrations, or health checks.

Of course, we also offer remote systems administration services as well.

Chuck Fried is the President and CEO of TxMQ, and a former developer. He can be reached at www.txmq.com, @chuckfried and chuck@txmq.com