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A multitude of businesses have databases which they use for various purposes, such as storing customer info and running websites and apps.
Plenty of organizations that rely on databases for mission-critical services every day may also be unaware of just how important it is to stay on top of maintenance duties.
To bring you up to speed, here is a look at just how significant the task of database maintenance can be to the smooth running of a modern enterprise.
Sluggish performance hurts productivity
While you may not notice it from moment to moment, over time the performance of a poorly maintained database will suffer, and this will have knock-on effects that are eventually conspicuous elsewhere within the organization.
Most notably, if employees are unable to access the information they need efficiently, their productivity levels will falter, and a suboptimal database will be the root cause of this.
As such, tracking your database performance should be seen as a major step towards pinpointing problems, troubleshooting issues and making sure that this infrastructure runs like clockwork, so that in turn your employees are able to fulfill their productivity potential.
Unplanned downtime is an avoidable expense
In a worst case scenario, if your business fails to maintain its database, then the entire system could be brought to its knees and outages may occur, knocking out any services which are reliant on the database to function.
This is far from ideal, and the cost of unplanned downtime is enough to seriously impact larger firms and push smaller companies dangerously close to the precipice.
Having a regular maintenance schedule in place and using the right tools to track and monitor performance will allow you to weed out potentially catastrophic complications sooner rather than later, so you can nip them in the bud rather than allowing them to spiral out of control untouched.
Your reputation is on the line
It is necessary to remember that it is not just employees and other internal operatives that will feel frustrated if a database does not perform as expected due to a lack of diligent maintenance, but also any customers and third parties that interact with your organization.
It is bad for your brand if your site and apps which are customer-facing are slow, inconsistent or incapable of keeping data in an easily accessible format.
Reputational damage of this kind can take a long while to repair, especially if your business is relatively new on the scene and you are hoping to win over customers in niches that you have yet to target effectively.
There are lots of other reasons to give priority to database maintenance rather than pushing it to one side, but the aforementioned examples should be enough to motivate you to make changes to your practices, or else fall foul of the various hazards and risks that might otherwise afflict your business. The long term benefits will definitely make any short term investments in database maintenance justifiable.
