Ensuring application availability is much more than simple up/down monitoring, as today's users have come to expect real-time responses, regardless of the device or network. While application front ends and back ends vary widely by application type, what almost all have in common is their dependency on transactional databases. To truly understand application performance, IT professionals must analyze database workloads in application context.

A recent Unisphere Research survey revealed that leading enterprises are turning to database lifecycle management (DLM) to address the complexity of modern databases. DLM involves coordinated processes, tools and people to optimize all aspects of the data lifecycle including data architecture and modeling, database design, performance monitoring, administration, security, storage and archiving.

Nearly 90 percent of survey respondents agree that the complexity of their database environment has increased over the past five years, while more than 45 percent say these environments have grown "significantly" or "extremely" more complex during this time. Getting a handle on these environments is critical to ensuring enterprise application availability and efficiency, not to mention a company's ability to conduct business and generate revenue.

Survey results indicate that nearly 80 percent of organizations now have some sort of DLM initiative underway, but most are in the early stages and 51 percent are part of existing application lifecycle management (ALM) efforts. While it's encouraging that companies understand the importance of databases to their ALM efforts, they may not be giving DLM the focus it deserves.

Close to 90 percent of companies using DLM solutions are already seeing a range of tangible business benefits as a result of their DLM efforts, including increased data systems uptime, making data more highly available to end users, increased confidence in the data, and more rapid and frequent delivery of applications.

Cloud computing represents a new way of managing data environments that may relieve enterprise data shops of some administrative burdens and provide speed and flexibility advantages for the business. For mission-critical applications, the movement to the cloud presents some sobering news. Only 19 percent of data managers surveyed indicate they intend to move a significant portion of their enterprise data to public cloud, while 26 percent intend to move to more secure private or hybrid cloud environments. These figures indicate that enterprise applications will not be able to fully leverage the benefits of data in the cloud for some time.

Aligning applications with data seems to be a key issue for many IT pros. When asked what their most pressing challenges were in managing database environments, "determining related application issues" was top of mind for 30 percent of respondents. According to one, DLM addresses this issue by enhancing the "ability to remain in step with the application."

Enterprise applications are only as effective as the databases that provide their foundation, and these survey findings make it clear that IT pros fully understand this reality. As a result, many companies are embracing DLM initiatives to ensure their mission-critical applications are deployed quickly, run with optimal efficiency and provide maximum business value.

Vicky Harp is a Corporate Strategist at IDERA.