Problem

When it comes to your company’s database, performance issues can present themselves in many different ways to the user. Poor database performance could cause:

• A report that used to take ten seconds to now take a full minute
• Slow applications and user frustration
• Even a full production downtime

In each case, a slow-running query or downtime in production can impact other pieces of a business’ process that rely on the ability to quickly access data when it’s needed. For example, a company running two SQL Server databases had consistent blocking and contention when trying to access certain data. This resulted in multiple production outages, which shut down internal processes and prevented its customers from accessing a business-critical application.

This issue arises for many of our customers when they try to identify and isolate a performance issue. 

Often, it is difficult to quantify a slow running application with more detail than its impact on the end user (i.e. “Our application isn’t working!”)

It is common for the customer to assume the whole system is broken rather than just one database performance issue causing back up. Then, the troubleshooting for a solution often falls to an employee who is not properly trained to identify the root of the issue. For example, most of IT troubleshooting starts at the operation infrastructure level and looks at CPU performance, DISK performance or database memory, among other things. If no issues are detected, the user may look to the software vendor next. But if the problem isn’t within the infrastructure or software, chances are it’s in the database. Unfortunately, the database is often the last place checked because it’s the most nuanced to actually fix.

Solution 

This is usually the time that our team of DBAs get called in. Often, frustrated IT professionals reach out to a colleague or network of their peers who refer us to solve the problem.

With nearly 60% of our new business coming from referrals, we’ve earned a reputation for our hyper-specialized approach and ability to quickly identify the issues plaguing a database environment then seamlessly implement a solution with little to no downtime.

In the case of the organization mentioned above, they reached out to us because they assumed their performance issues were a result of their database version simply falling out of support. Without proper guidance and expertise, they reasoned that a simple database upgrade would solve the problems that were impacting critical pieces of business that relied on that database. However, after our team began gathering requirements for an upgrade, we identified a myriad of issues that their internal team simply did not have the expertise to identify themselves. We were then able to remediate those issues and get their critical business processes back up and running, while simultaneously creating an upgrade plan that would keep the database running smoothly in the future.

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"Without proper guidance and expertise, they reasoned that a simple database upgrade would solve the problems that were impacting critical pieces of business that relied on that database."

Results 

For many of our customers, working with us has allowed them to move from a problem-solving state into a profit-seeking state. By offloading those wasted cycles of time and effort put into solving a database performance issue, they can re-focus on their core competencies while we not only remediate performance issues when they arise but also stop them from happening through ongoing monitoring and maintenance. This allows their business to function optimally with less downtime, faster applications, and higher user satisfaction.