Fauna has released a new report, “State of the Enterprise Database 2018,” that draws findings from a recent survey of more than 400 database managers and decision makers. Among the key findings, survey respondents across all industries ranked security as the most important aspect of choosing a database solution. Specifically, security was found to be roughly 13 times more important than cost when choosing a datastore, and stored secrets and end-to-end encryption were identified as the most important aspects.

Within specific industry sectors, the results show that retail and financial services companies are most concerned with multi-region availability, whereas financial services companies care most about multi-primary operations, and high availability is the key consideration for retail businesses. When it comes to the cloud, approximately 55% of survey takers said they deploy datastores to the cloud while 45% deploy to a data center they own or outsource to a third party. The data also reveals that enterprises are more likely to use the Google Cloud Platform, while small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are more likely to deploy to a managed data center.

The survey also shows that while half of database managers and decision makers believe open source datastores are a better choice, less than a third are using them today. Additionally, legacy SQL databases are still in use across most enterprise environments today, while a small percentage of respondents – roughly 11% – said they have deployed NoSQL datastores. 

“The data revealed in our survey is somewhat surprising, given the current business landscape and the growing digital transformation movement,” said Evan Weaver, CEO of Fauna. “As companies across all industries move forward with their digital strategies and offer customer-facing platforms and applications to deliver a more engaging experience, the amount of transactional data being generated is exploding. Yet the vast majority of companies are still sitting on legacy systems and seem hesitant to invest in new technologies that will address current and future business requirements.

“At the same time, database administrators have valid concerns about security, and there is also a growing movement to put datastores in the cloud,” he continued. “We see the industry at a critical crossroads, where businesses are competing for revenue and global customer growth while relying on outdated technologies that will drastically limit their success. This is the very reason we started Fauna — to offer enterprises a reliable, secure, relational NoSQL database that can scale to meet future demands, and also provide the cost and performance benefits they need to modernize their database architectures and establish stronger brand loyalty.”

In today’s Digital Age, businesses require availability, consistency, scalability and security in their database architectures in order to maintain a competitive advantage. The primary difference between FaunaDB and other transactional databases is its ability to meet all of these requirements while also supporting multi-cloud environments, combining established technologies into a single system that delivers on three important business values: productivity, safety and agility.

The Fauna survey was conducted in August 2018.