Hello all! This post is nothing but a simple request. Please, if you have a few spare minutes, meander on over to this link and fill out the State of the Database Landscape Survey for 2024. Yeah, it’s for Redgate Software, my employer. But, really, it’s for everyone. Why is it for everyone? Because, every time we do one of these surveys, we don’t sit on the data, we share it. Here are the results from the 2023 survey, published earlier this year.
Yeah, but, I hear you opining, what does this really do for me? Well, let’s talk about it.
Consuming Survey Results
On the one hand, who cares. Gotta get to work. Reading about what other people are doing has no bearing on me.
True.
To a degree.
Thing is, there really are trends to this stuff, and those trends, well, they eventually bite us. Back in 2009, the first time I saw Azure SQL Database, I fell in love. Yeah, it was honestly more than a bit of a steaming pile of you know what, what with its severe data size limits & some odd database internals limits. However, I saw true potential. I did see where it would get to (hell, to be honest, one of the few times I was right about something that big, talk to me about my laser disc collection sometime). What I didn’t see was how long it was going to take everyone else to see that potential and begin to respond to it. Without data to back me up, every year, I declared, this is the year that cloud computing, especially Platform as a Service takes off. Plan accordingly. And every year, for years, I was wrong.
Then, around 2016 or so, we did a survey, and the results showed, yeah, cloud is taking off. Then, hoo boy, did a bunch of people I know get blind-sided when, suddenly, they were told to migrate to the cloud.
Yeah, but, Grant, what’s that really matter?
OK. Well, let’s say you’re a junior data pro looking to see, hey, what does my future look like? Where are people headed? What skills should I work on? A published survey, with solid information, can help that junior person get in front of a trend that will certainly assist them in jump starting their career.
What if you’re a senior data pro? Two things, seeing what your peers are up to is a good health check for what you’re doing. And, those trends, we’ve seen ’em come, and go, and know the impact they can have. Getting a little learning in when the next virtual machine/container/data analysis/cloud/AI comes your way helps you stay on top of your game. It’s not about hopping on each new thing. It’s about being prepared for the new things that are either coming at you, like it or not, or, that you see real potential in. The survey absolutely helps here.
How about management? Again, an understanding of how data technology is being consumed within your industry helps you understand how your team is doing. Are you leading the pack, in the pack, behind the pack, or carving your own independent path. The kind of data from a survey like this helps inform a lot of decisions going forward.
Conclusion
Taking part in the survey is pretty pain free. Getting the results costs nothing. You can use the information that you and your peers provide to assist you. Win/win. So, please, follow the link and take the survey.
Appreciate it.
Oh, and there’s a $250 Amazon gift card you could win. Honestly, do this for the data, but if that acts as an incentive, go for it.