Enterprise Database Applications and the Cloud: A Difficult Road Ahead

There is considerable interest in moving DBMS applications from inside enterprise data centers to the cloud, both to reduce cost and to increase flexibility and elasticity. Some of these applications are "green field" projects (i.e., new applications), others are existing legacy systems that must be migrated to the cloud. In another dimension, some are decision support applications while others are update-oriented. In this paper, we discuss the technical and political challenges that these various enterprise applications face when considering cloud deployment. In addition, a requirement for quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees will generate additional disruptive issues. In some circumstances, achieving good DBMS performance on current cloud architectures and future hardware technologies will be non-trivial. In summary, there is a difficult road ahead for enterprise database applications.