Saturday, December 20, 2025

Enhance Developer Velocity with Kubernetes Databases


Your organization has invested closely in agile growth, microservices, and Kubernetes to maneuver quicker. Your app groups can spin up a brand new service in minutes. So why can it nonetheless take per week to get a database for it?

The bottleneck has shifted. It’s not compute; it’s the database. Guide, ticket-based provisioning nonetheless dominates, forcing builders to attend days for one thing they need to have the ability to create immediately.

That delay can get costly.

Our newest evaluation discovered {that a} single handbook database request prices a mean of $1,140 in human capital, representing misplaced time for builders ready, DBAs executing, and managers approving. Multiply that by each ticket, each dash, and each stalled characteristic launch, and the fee to innovation turns into staggering.

Most organizations have already containerized their functions, however the database stays the final piece of infrastructure that resists automation. Till it joins the identical cloud-native working mannequin, transformation stays incomplete.

The excellent news is that this friction is now elective. By transferring your databases to Kubernetes, you may flip provisioning right into a self-service course of, remove ticket queues, and eventually unlock the developer velocity your groups had been promised.

The “Velocity Engine”: From ticket queue to self-service

Right here’s what that shift really appears to be like like in observe.

The previous approach (the bottleneck):

A developer information a ticket. It waits in a queue. A DBA manually provisions the database, evaluations configurations, and fingers it off. That’s days or generally weeks of delay earlier than a single line of code will be examined.

The brand new approach (the accelerator):

A developer defines a database as code, identical to every other service. A Kubernetes operator mechanically provisions, configures, and manages it. In minutes, a totally compliant, production-ready database is reside.

Simply so we’re clear, this isn’t about changing your DBAs. It’s about liberating them. You cease paying your database consultants to carry out handbook, repetitive provisioning and patching. You free them to deal with high-value strategic work: efficiency optimization, question tuning, and constructing a knowledge structure that offers you a aggressive edge.

The distinction is a whole transformation of your working mannequin:

When builders can self-serve databases, your database consultants shift their focus from upkeep to innovation, concentrating on structure, optimization, and efficiency.

The C-Stage traps that nonetheless kill velocity

That is normally the purpose the place somebody says, “We’ve already solved this. We pay for a managed DBaaS from our cloud supplier.

Sadly, that’s simply swapping one bottleneck for an additional. You’ve traded a course of one for a strategic one.

  • Proprietary lock-in: You’ll be able to’t transfer quick when your structure, information, and pricing are all managed by a single vendor. True agility means having the liberty to maneuver your workloads to any cloud or again on-premises to satisfy enterprise or compliance wants. Proprietary platforms are architected to make this as painful as doable.
  • 100%+ markup: That “simple” DBaaS additionally comes with a staggering, hidden premium. Our new analysis exhibits that for the very same manufacturing workload, you would be paying over 100% extra for a proprietary DBaaS than for working the identical open supply database on Kubernetes. 

Kubernetes brings steadiness again. It delivers DBaaS-like automation and scalability with out sacrificing management or incurring vendor charges.

Proof, not simply idea: How Nokia unlocked velocity at scale

When Nokia’s inner growth groups demanded quicker entry to databases, their central IT group confronted a selection: scale handbook DBA operations or rethink their total method. 

They selected the latter.

Utilizing Percona Operators, Nokia constructed a self-service Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) on Kubernetes, which powers one of many world’s largest personal clouds, using greater than 700,000 cores. Builders can now create databases in minutes, with out requiring approvals or handbook setup, and with out being locked right into a proprietary vendor.

The end result: Nokia delivers databases on demand at large scale, enabling its groups to maneuver quicker with no surge in handbook operations or price. See how Nokia achieved this with Percona’s open supply database software program, remodeling one of many world’s largest personal clouds right into a high-velocity surroundings that delivers self-service entry with out compromising safety, governance, or management.

The next step to quicker, smarter database supply

Each group that has modernized its CI/CD pipelines faces the identical hole. Databases nonetheless function on a slower, ticket-driven mannequin, and shutting that hole is what lastly delivers on the promise of full cloud-native agility.

This weblog exhibits why Kubernetes databases are the important thing to developer velocity. Our new analysis paper, Take Again Management of Your Databases, supplies the how.

It’s the C-level playbook for main this transformation. Inside, you’ll discover:

  • The 4-stage maturity mannequin: A transparent framework to benchmark your present state and determine the steps to achieve a high-velocity, self-service platform.
  • A whole TCO breakdown: A line-by-line monetary mannequin displaying find out how to minimize prices and reinvest these financial savings instantly into innovation.
  • The strategic roadmap: A sensible information to avoiding vendor lock-in and constructing a future-ready information surroundings that helps long-term agility.

 

See the analysis

 

And when you’re right here, try Open Supply Unplugged, Percona’s no-BS webinar collection the place prime tech leads share real-world challenges, reside demos, and sensible options for open supply databases. 

 

Open Supply Unplugged

Related Articles

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Latest Articles