When things go wrong you need someone who can diagnose the problem quickly and get the business back online. This goes well beyond most people’s view that a DBA is there to manage backups and perform restores when things go down.
When the systems are slow DBAs work to improve performance that will benefit the whole business. Access to data is fundamental and accessing that data in record time is becoming more important by the day. Performance monitoring is a 24/7/365 activity that needs to be done right.
When your business wants to plan ahead you need a DBA who can advise with full knowledge of the latest technologies and advancements. Without a DBA, who you gonna call?
When you want to secure your data a DBA will ensure that access both internally and externally is in place so that the right users have access to the right data at the right time. Without expert management of your organisation’s data it could easily fall into the wrong hands.
When you’re thinking about the cloud there are lots of questions that need answering, which cloud? What cloud? What setup? Access, security, the list goes on. This is another area where the DBA can consult on the best strategy for your business.
When you want to be compliant a DBA will work with the business to ensure that everything is in place for audits and compliance. It can be a complicated area so this is best left to the data management expert.
When you don’t want to pay extra your DBA will be able to suggest ways that things can be done cheaper. Licenses can be expensive and there are ways that you can do more for less – this is the way, for expert DBAs.
When you want to create and maintain new instances this job will fall to someone but a DBA will know how to best provision and maintain new platforms, instances, databases and ways of working.
When you have specialised data handling you may be managing huge databases with unstructured data types such as images, documents, or sound and video files. This specialised management calls for specialised knowledge which is within the remit of a good DBA.
When you want to troubleshoot DBAs are on call to discuss any issues. Whether you need to quickly restore lost data or correct issues to minimise damage, the DBA should be there to assist in a timely manner.

Thoughts
As you can see, DBAs are vital to businesses because your data is your most important asset. Securing your data, optimising your data, recovering from potential disaster scenarios and making sure the data is highly available are the key charges of a DBA.

Do you need the skills of a DBA? Absolutely but you no longer need DBA’s to be on site or even on payroll. Digital Samurai offer DBAaaS which takes the role of a DBA to the next level for our clients and includes many additional benefits.

Final Note
If you urgently require DBA assistance but do not have a support agreement with us we offer a SQL Server Health Check to identify problems which our team can then quickly resolve.