MariaDB Survey Reveals COVID-19’s Impact on Cloud Adoption

MariaDB Corporation today announced the results of a new global survey that looked at the initial COVID-19 impact on businesses moving to the cloud and IT professionals’ attitudes on what has changed – and what they think will change. Nearly all (99%) respondents worldwide indicated an impact on their business today related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation only slightly improves looking ahead to 2021, with 84% expecting a continued impact. And 74% of respondents expect a second wave of COVID-19 impact, with 51% planning to move more applications to the cloud to prepare for it.

MariaDB is one the top five most used databases globally, with availability on all of the leading cloud platforms and 75% of Fortune 500 companies running it. With this position in the marketplace, MariaDB is uniquely able to bring a global perspective on technology trends facing businesses worldwide.

The goal with issuing the survey was to identify and put meaningful cloud adoption statistics to trends the company noticed with regard to COVID-19’s impact on IT operations, such as increased interest in cloud databases like MariaDB SkySQL, in-person events, outlook on the future and more. Beyond the hard business numbers, the survey also looked at the “human” impact of current and future changes.

Cloud Adoption Accelerating for Some, Slowing for Others

The impact on businesses’ cloud adoption plans – with 40% currently accelerating their move to the cloud – has led to increases across a range of related decisions as companies prepare for future COVID-related shutdowns. When asked to select all that apply, the top choices on this topic were:

• 51% are planning to move more applications to the cloud
• 39% expect to be 100% in the cloud
• 32% are starting a move to the cloud

On the flip side, 24% of all respondents said they are slowing down their move to the cloud because of COVID-19’s impact. The U.S. indicated the highest percentage of slowing (36%), while the U.K. had the lowest (12%).

Specific to cloud databases, when asked what would prevent them from going “all-in” (choosing all that apply), the results showed:

• Security: 73%
• Price: 46%
• Compatibility: 45%
• Scalability: 35%
• Migration: 33%
• Lack of multi-cloud offering: 21%

Forever WFH

With 74% of respondents expecting new challenges because of a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, technologists are implementing a variety of technology changes to prepare for future shutdowns.

• The two strategies being implemented most are (choosing all that apply): Set up remote access for all employees (57%) and move more applications to the cloud (51%).
• 46% of respondents are implementing “forever” work-from-home (WFH) strategies.
• European respondents favor implementing remote access setups and permanent WFH strategies as the top two priorities to combat the fallout from the pandemic.
• U.S. respondents agree on the top priority of favoring remote access setups, but differ on the second priority, indicating that moving applications to the cloud was #2.

In-Person Technology Events … See You Next Year

One of the early consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic was the cancellation of in-person corporate and technology events. While an overwhelming number of respondents miss these in-person events, 70% said the earliest they would consider attending an in-person technology event would be in 2021.

• 73% of respondents indicated missing corporate and technology events “very much” or “extremely.”
• 26% of respondents would consider attending an in-person technology event this year (2020), while 70% indicated the earliest they would attend would be in 2021.
• U.S. respondents were more evenly split compared to Europeans. In the U.S., 41% said they would consider an in-person event this year while 58% said next year would be the earliest.
• 95% of respondents will change their ongoing technology event behavior as a result of COVID-19, with 25% saying they will only attend online events, 69% attending more online events, and 1% not attending any events at all.

“The survey data surfaces trends we have been seeing with our MariaDB SkySQL cloud database business over the last few months, such as the increased movement to the cloud due to COVID-19’s global impact,” said Franz Aman, CMO, MariaDB Corporation. “By default, cloud infrastructure is designed and secured for access from anywhere, no need to enable or figure out remote working, that is the native lifestyle. Companies realize that many structural changes are here to stay and future disruptions – be it another pandemic or an entirely different disaster – need to be anticipated and planned for. The outcome is an acceleration to the cloud for mission-critical applications, and the cloud databases and analytics they rely on. An enterprise-grade DBaaS becomes the foundation for any crisis-resistant, essential enterprise application.”