One of the easiest ways to escape this "infrastructure morass" is to migrate critical services to the cloud and use specialized solutions, such as managed databases: https://hostman.com/products/managed-database/ — this gives businesses a ready-made, stable platform and offloads much of the technical work.

Today, even a small online project can depend on several databases: one for users, another for payments, a third for analytics. Each one needs to be installed, configured, updated, monitored, backed up, and secured. On a small project, developers handle this on the fly; on larger projects, a dedicated team of administrators is required. In both cases, the business pays for the same thing—maintaining the infrastructure, which doesn't generate revenue but merely enables the product to function.

Why the Classic Database Approach No Longer Works

The model used to be straightforward: there's a server, a database running on it, and applications connecting to it. But as the workload and the number of services grew, things became more complex.

Typical problems have arisen:

• difficulties with scaling: vertical growth (adding CPU and RAM) sooner or later reaches its limits, while horizontal growth (clusters, replication, sharding) requires a high level of expertise;
• the risk of human errors during updates, patches, and configuration changes;
• the need for round-the-clock monitoring and incident response;
• the complexity of building fault tolerance and redundancy across multiple data centers.

As a result, infrastructure ceases to be a "transparent background" and becomes a separate project that requires planning, budgeting, and ongoing maintenance. For many companies, this is simply not their core competency.

What are the benefits of switching to managed databases?

Managed databases are typically understood to be a service where the provider takes on:

• deployment and initial configuration of the cluster;
• updates and application of security patches;
• backup and recovery;
• monitoring and automatic restarts in case of failures;
• convenient scaling of resources.

For businesses, this means that responsibility for the "health" of the database is largely transferred to an external team, and developers work with the database as a service: there is an endpoint, there are credentials, there is documentation.

The difference is especially noticeable when a project grows: instead of panicking and rushing to buy a new server, it's enough to change the plan or cluster settings in the control panel. And most importantly, there's no need to redesign the architecture each time: the provider provides ready-made, proven designs.

Who benefits most from the move away from "standalone" databases?

1. Startups and fast-growing projects.
   These teams typically don't have the resources for a full-fledged DevOps infrastructure. It's important for them to quickly launch new features, test hypotheses, and avoid crashes in the middle of a marketing campaign. Managed databases eliminate a critical layer of risk: no need to worry about updates, overnight outages, or manual recovery.
2. Product companies with a small staff.
   Even if they have one or two strong engineers, keeping them on "production duty" is wasteful. It's much more profitable to have these people focused on system architecture, query optimization, and implementing new technologies, rather than routine tasks like setting up replication or backups.
3. Businesses that value cost predictability.
   In-house infrastructure often becomes a "black box" of expenses: equipment ages, something suddenly breaks, and urgent purchases are needed. With managed solutions, costs are more transparent: bills are based on easily understandable resources (vCPU, RAM, disk space) and additional options that can be managed.

Security and resiliency as part of the service

For many companies, data security is the primary consideration for or against the cloud. However, managed database providers often provide a much more stringent level of security than a company can provide on its own.

It's not just about encryption and access, but also about:

• certified data centers;
• multi-level backup schemes;
• capabilities of geo-distributed clusters;
• automatic application of critical security patches.

It's important to understand that security isn't a one-time checklist setup, but an ongoing process. A managed solution provider specializes in ensuring this process is ongoing.

How to Prepare for Migration to a Managed Database

Migrating doesn't have to be painful. With a systematic approach, you can gradually and seamlessly transition from "standalone" databases to managed ones:

1. Audit the current infrastructure.
   It's important to understand which databases are in use, what data volumes are involved, and what latency and availability requirements are. This stage is a good time to identify "hidden" dependencies: legacy services that still access a particular table.
2. Prioritize.
   You don't have to migrate everything at once. You can start with the most critical or, conversely, the least risky systems—for example, moving an analytical database or a separate module to a managed service.
3. Migration plan and test run.
   A test cluster is created, data is replicated, connections are configured, and workloads are run. After this, traffic can be migrated gradually using canary releases and staged switchovers.
4. Post-migration monitoring.
   The first days and weeks after migration are a period of heightened attention: metrics are reviewed, errors are logged, and feedback is collected from the team. If everything goes well, the migration of further systems can be planned.

Possible fears and how to deal with them

Every technical manager has concerns:

• "We will lose control over the data."
• "If something happens to the provider, there's nothing we can do."
• "It's probably more expensive than keeping everything to yourself."

Some of these fears are justified, while others are the result of old habits. In practice, much depends on the choice of provider and an accurate assessment of the total cost of ownership (TCO).

When you factor in administrator salaries, equipment costs, rack space rental, upgrades, and the risk of downtime due to human error and force majeure, a managed solution often turns out to be no more expensive, and sometimes even cheaper. At the same time, businesses gain the most important benefit: predictability and the ability to focus on product development.

Bottom line: Managed databases are not a fad, but a logical next step

The IT world has long been moving away from hardware and manual administration to a service-based model. First, application servers migrated to the cloud, then storage systems, and now it's databases' turn.

For businesses this is an opportunity:

• free the team from routine;
• reduce risks associated with human factors;
• obtain predictable infrastructure costs;
• scale faster and enter new markets.

Managed databases allow you to stop doing things that don't directly add value to the client and return your focus to what matters most—the product, service quality, and company growth.