Understand the Business, Not Just the Technology
Remember that being technologically adept is just a part
of being a good DBA. Although technology is important, understanding your
business needs is more important. If you do not understand the impact on the
business of the databases you manage, you will simply be throwing technology
around with no clear purpose.
Business needs must dictate what technology is applied to what
database—and to which applications. Using the latest and greatest (and most
expensive) technology and software might be fun and technologically
challenging, but it most likely will not be required for every database you
implement. The DBA’s tools and utilities need to be tied to business strategies
and initiatives. In this way, the DBA’s work becomes integrated with the goals
and operations of the organization.
The first step in achieving this needed synergy is the
integration of DBA services with the other core components of the IT
infrastructure. Of course, DBAs should be able to monitor and control the
databases under their purview, but they should also be able to monitor them
within the context of the broader spectrum of the IT infrastructure—including
systems, applications, storage, and networks. Only then can companies begin to
tie service-level agreements to business needs, rather than technology metrics.
DBAs should be able to gain insight into the natural cycles of
the business just by performing their job. Developers and administrators of
other parts of the IT infrastructure will not have the vision into the busiest
times of the day, week, quarter, or year because they are not privy to the
actual flow of data from corporate business functions. But the DBA has access
to that information as a component of performing the job. It is empowering to
be able to understand business cycle information and apply it on the job.
DBAs need to expand further to take advantage of their special
position in the infrastructure. Talk to the end users — not just the application
developers. Get a sound understanding of how the databases will be used before
implementing any database design. Gain an understanding of the database’s
impact on the company’s bottom line, so that when the inevitable problems occur
in production you will remember the actual business impact of not having that
data available. This also allows you to create procedures that minimize the
potential for such problems.
To fulfill the promise of business/IT integration, it will be
necessary to link business services to the underlying technology. For example,
a technician should be able to immediately comprehend that a service outage to
transaction X7R2 in the PRD2 environment means that regional demand deposit
customers cannot access their accounts. See the difference?
Focusing on transactions, TP monitors, and databases is the core
of the DBA’s job. But servicing customers is the reason the DBA builds those
databases and manages those transactions. Technicians with an understanding of
the business impact of technology decisions will do a better job of servicing
the business strategy. This is doubly true for the DBA’s manager. Technology
managers who speak in business terms are more valuable to their company.
Of course, the devil is in the details. A key component of
realizing effective business/IT integration for DBAs is the ability to link
specific pieces of technology to specific business services. This requires a
service impact management capability—that is, analyzing the technology required
to power each critical business service and documenting the link. Technologies
exist to automate some of this through event automation and service modeling.
Such capabilities help to transform availability and performance data into
detailed knowledge about the status of business services and service-level
agreements.
Today’s modern corporations need technicians who are cognizant of
the business impact of their management decisions. As such, DBAs need to get
busy transforming themselves to become more business savvy — that is, to keep
an eye on the business impact of the technology under their span of control.
