Oracle vs PostgreSQL: Cost Analysis for Enterprises Adopting Cloud-Native Strategies
Harsha Vardhan Reddy Kavuluri · International Journal of Emerging Research in Engineering and Technology · 2024
As the world is going digital day by day, companies are adopting more and more cloud-native solutions to increase the scalability and flexibility of their systems and reduce costs. Having the right DBMS is crucial when redesigning a new system and a fourth appropriate system that fits the organization's financial and operation strategies. Oracle is well-known as a proprietary deterministic database solution that provides high performance, high security, and professional support while being associated with high prices for licenses and maintenance. On this note, PostgreSQL, through an open-source database, has risen through the ranks due to key factors such as cost, possibility of scalability, and experience. In this paper, the evaluation of these two DBMSs in terms of their costs is discussed, and factors such as licensing costs, infrastructure costs, maintenance costs, and support costs of the two DBMSs are also compared. From such aspects, enterprises will be better positioned to make performance and cost-effective decision-making to support their cloud-native transformations. Adopting cloud-native architectures also requires organizations to consider other costs around databases apart from the license charges. Issues like the scalability of a solution, achieving the best performance, and the challenges related to being trapped by a particular vendor’s offering are also paramount in long-term business planning. These extra-cost components are 1) high availability, 2) clustering, and 3) security, which Oracle offers as additional packages to its basic product, which raises the TCO. On the other hand, since PostgreSQL is an open-source database, it does not claim such expenditures yet performs similarly to MySQL with the help of extensions and third-party contributions. This paper also considers hidden costs, including migration difficulty and training costs that affect savings. Therefore, by answering the research questions and conducting the cost-benefit analysis, this research will help the enterprises understand which of the two databases DBMS is most appropriate for the cloud-native approach as per its efficiency, cost, and ability to scale to meet future needs