Futureproof your financial databases – FinTech Futures

As a fintech company, your business hinges on your ability to leverage data. Data is the engine that drives you forward and enables you to outpace traditional financial service providers.

Your database environment is the bedrock of your business

But what happens when you ride that engine too hard?

Right now, your database administrators (DBAs) are certainly managing more databases and supporting technologies than ever. Next year, they’ll manage more. The year after that, even more. Greater complexity is the inevitable consequence of Big Data. As you continue to collect, manage, and mine data to create new opportunities for your business, the pressure on your database environment and those responsible for it grows. That’s a no-brainer.

But eventually that pressure has to give, right? Eventually, you’ll hit a point in which your environment’s fragmented, highly complex workflows result in delayed application development, increased frequency and duration of downtime, and compromised data security. Then what? What would be the impact of prolonged downtime on your business? How would a breach of sensitive financial information affect consumer opinion?

These are the realities, according to a recent Percona survey, that keep those responsible for your database environment – DBAs, architects, developers – awake at night. 59% lost sleep due to worries about downtime and availability. It makes sense considering that 82% of respondents reported at least a 5% database footprint growth over the previous year, with 62% reporting significant growth and 12% reporting growth over 50%.

Simply put, your database environment is the bedrock of your business. You cannot expect more out of it without an optimised architecture in place. At worst, you open your business to the aforementioned degradations. At best, you’ll waste money on solutions you don’t need and risk your data being locked in by third-party vendors.

What to keep in mind when optimising your database environment

There’s plenty of information out there about optimising your database environment. The problem, though, is that many how-tos and tips are general purpose and do not take the specific demands placed on fintech database environments into consideration.

Consider some of the unique challenges you face:

• Regulatory compliance: Regulations such as PCI DSS and GDPR, the know your customer (KYC) standard, and recommendations brought forth by organisations like FATF all impact how financial institutions collect, store, and manage data.
• Data security: Initiating financial transactions in real-time increases the challenges of security and privacy. Data must be secured against both malicious attacks as well as human error. The impacts of a data breach – from regulatory penalties to loss of consumer trust – can be devastating.
• Performance: Instant payments, transfers, credits, etc, have helped set fintech apart from traditional financial services, but that speed cannot be taken for granted. If the database at the core of this system isn’t performant, everything else falls apart.

Then, consider some of your other goals, and ask yourself questions like:

• Are you looking to own your own data and avoid vendor lock-in?
• Will you benefit from open source?
• Do you have the in-house staff to support your database? Or will you need outside help?

How Percona can help

Percona supports more than a third of the Fortune 50 and numerous fintech companies, banks, and financial institutions, including Venmo, Easy Payment Gateway, and Standard Chartered Bank.

Percona makes it easier to run complex database environments. Highly experienced open source advisors will deliver a full range of service options, so you can maintain, optimise, and enhance your financial database environment. You’ll experience a reduction of the infrastructure costs, prevention of performance issues, and freedom from vendor lock-in when choosing Percona as your database support partner.

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By Roma Novikov, Product Manager, Percona

Roma joined Percona at the beginning of 2017.  He started programming in sixth grade and has more than 15 years of commercial experience in web development. He previously worked as CTO of one of the biggest web development/web design e-commerce companies in Europe.