How Tech Companies Avoid DBA Burnout

Most technology companies, particularly high-growth firms with special competencies, are squarely focused on a core capability. This might be software development, infrastructure, logistics, hardware or device manufacturing, etc. These organizations have special data needs, but their leaders don’t necessarily want staff to take their eyes off the company’s own specific competencies to manage their databases.

Companies risk losing their most talented tech employees unless they can limit the burnout caused by round-the-clock tech support. How can technology companies keep the specialized talent they have and get the database coverage they need to keep growing?

The answer is bringing in a partner whose sole business is database management, and using that partner to handle the routine tasks while your team adds the specialized knowledge of your niche. With outside resources, your team can focus on what it is best at: using technology to create a better future for your customers.

Round-the-Clock Database Support

Many companies have an excellent tech team in place. It’s too bad those talented individuals can’t work 24 hours a day! If you were to try to work your talent like that, they would burn out and leave. The best way to both keep your team intact and have ’round-the-clock coverage is to use Datavail’s team of experts to work nights, weekends, vacations, and busy periods, and to perform backup and other basic maintenance tasks.

Tech columnist David Frankk writes in The Examiner, “Remote database administration increases the ROI of an organization.” A DBA firm such as Datavail will have hundreds of skilled DBAs, each of whom has specific experience working with a mainstream database application. The team members are available around the clock, whenever you need coverage, whether it is for an hour a day or for weeks at a time.

One mid-sized computer services firm reconfigured its staff around Datavail’s capabilities, greatly improving its in-house team’s focus and productivity. “Datavail has made it possible for us to have 24×7 access to professional DBAs, which would have been impossible for our own staff,” said this company’s executive.

Reducing DBA Burnout and Turnover

Talented IT teams are difficult to keep. Companies tend to compensate them well and work them around the clock. Due to the long hours and the stress inherent in the job, these essential staff members are prone to break down, make mistakes, and/or leave the firm. The way to reduce burnout is to provide your database administrators with a backup team that can be counted on to cover for them, no matter what happens, regardless of the time of day or day of the year that staffing augmentation is needed.

In an interview with TechTarget, Facebook MySQL Database Administrator Rob Wultsch recommends you get external staffing in place: “When people don’t sleep because they get called every time a monitor blips, they tend to make more mistakes,” he says, adding it’s also, “nice to be able to call out when things go very wrong.”

Executives of one medium-sized computer tech firm found its IT team was being taxed by a steady flow of service tickets for small problems day and night. Datavail took ownership of those small fixes and passed the more important, more challenging issues to the client’s in-house team. “Automated ticket creation with Datavail’s ServiceNow system allows issues to be reported or worked on immediately,” one manager stated.

What’s Next?

For more information, get our whitepaper on The Unique Database Needs of Technology Companies. The whitepaper explores not only the need to reduce IT staff burnout, but also other database problems of special concern to high-tech firms, such as conserving cash and performing server health checks.

Your database needs are unique. Your organization can take advantage of Datavail’s talented pool of experienced database administrators to minimize costs while maximizing service levels. We allow your staff to become productive and effective at the jobs they were hired to do.

Whatever your business, Datavail can help with a wide range of tasks designed to keep your organization’s databases run more effectively and efficiently. By allowing us to tackle routine database administration tasks, we give your IT staff a better quality of life while giving your customers a higher level of service. For more information read our latest white paper on the unique needs of technology companies.

If you would like to know more about our database administration services and how we can help with your specific challenges, please contact Datavail to discuss a solution designed for your enterprise.