SingleStore Research Highlights a Spike in Data Demands Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

San Francisco, CA - March 31, 2021 - Many aspects of life and work stopped or slowed down significantly during the pandemic. But new research from SingleStore, the unified database for fast analytics, indicates that data requirements in the age of COVID-19 have been greater than ever. This research is based on a 500-person survey of IT professionals that Propeller Insights conducted in January 2021 on behalf of SingleStore.

“The pandemic expedited digital transformation, distilling the digitization that would have normally taken two to three years down to just six months,” said SingleStore CEO Raj Verma. “Organizations’ ability to adjust and adapt at this speed was nothing short of amazing. But now that the dust has settled, many companies are left grappling with data platforms that can’t easily handle all of their diverse data types and workloads, scale economically, or address the growing cloud complexity.”

The Pandemic Is Only Increasing The Need For Simplification, Modernization and Results

The vast majority (85.5%) of the survey group said that they have seen an increase in data demands since the start of the pandemic. But many said that their existing database or databases are not up to the task of handling the pandemic era’s volume and velocity of data:

• 43.8% of the IT professionals responding to theSingleStore survey said that they have experienced threeto four database-related bottlenecks since the start ofthe pandemic.
• More than a fifth said they have faced six to sevenbottlenecks amid COVID-19.
• This may help explain why 72% of IT professionals whoresponded to the SingleStore survey said that they haveconsidered changing their database services in the pastyear.

“The pandemic sent data volume and velocity – which were already on a rapid rise – into the stratosphere,” said Verma. “The existing data platforms that many organizations use today are struggling to keep up. That is creating climbing concurrency demands; rising costs and complexity; sluggish event-to-insight response; and unmet service level agreements.”

Cloud Migration, Cost Control, New Workloads, Outdated Systems Are Key Drivers Of Change

SingleStore research indicates that cloud migration is the leading reason that organizations are looking to embrace a new database – and leave added cost and complexity behind. More than half (51.8%) of those surveyed said cloud migration is driving them to consider modernization.

Nearly half (46.4%) said they want to adopt a new database because their current solution is too expensive. Almost as many (41.3%) said their current solution doesn’t meet new workload demands. More than a third (38.3%) said that their existing database has reached end of life.

Some IT professionals are considering modernizing their data platform to address today’s requirements and prepare them for success in the future. But many actually expect to make such changes in the coming months. More than a third (36.7%) of IT professionals said they plan to replace their current data solutions in the next three to six months. An even greater share (37.1%) said they will implement a modern data platform in the next six months to a year.

“The conventional wisdom in recent years has been to use a specialized datastore per workload. This is a relic of the previous era of cloud data management. It isn’t effective for achieving the real-time analytics experience that is essential in modern applications and winning SaaS products,” said Verma. “Analytics provide a clear direction on the steps that organizations can take to keep customers and employees happy, and even save lives. Yet many organizations forego analytics in exchange for better database performance.”

“Interest in the upcoming Couchbase IPO and recent Snowflake public offering highlight that today’s modern, data-driven enterprises want and need help managing data. But in some ways, the solutions from such companies are echoes of the past,” he added. “What’s needed now is a unified approach that leverages SQL, brings together real-time streaming data and analytics on multi-model data, and supports an agile, flexible cloud deployment model. With SingleStore, organizations get all of that in one high-performance, low-latency, easy-to-use platform.”

The SingleStore database enables fast analytics on any data, anywhere to support organizations’ analytics and customer experiences. SingleStore removes complexity and cost by supporting both transactions and analytics; handling structured, unstructured and semi-structured data; and working in public clouds, on-premises environments and hybrid deployments.

About SingleStore

SingleStore is dedicated to helping businesses adapt more quickly, embrace diverse data, and accelerate digital innovation by operationalizing all data through one platform for all of their moments that matter. These capabilities are provided as a service on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Red Hat and through your own deployments with SingleStoreDB Cloud and SingleStoreDB On-Premises. Visit www.singlestore.com or follow us @SingleStoreDB.