As a DBA, it takes more than just being a great technician to keep your customers happy. There are dozens of database experts that are willing to provide you with their own technical administration best practices. In this series, I intend to round out your knowledge to make you more than just a good administrator. And I have a news blast for you: if you want to be viewed as a strategic resource, being a technical expert isn\u2019t enough. Whether your customers are internal or external (like mine here at RDX), if you focus on just providing great technical support, you are only winning half the battle when it comes to keeping your customers happy. Being a strong, well respected technician is an excellent career path. The DBA profession is growing, and demand often exceeds the DBA supply. Because of the trade you have chosen, the DBA position provides you with an excellent opportunity to play a more strategic role in your organization. One of the benefits that I am able to provide is that my organization supports over 400 remote database administration services customers. Our customer base spans the market spectrum from high technology to heavy industry. In addition to having every market sector represented, the size of our customer base also varies widely. We support organizations that have virtually no IT support teams to multi-national organizations consisting of huge IT staffs and hundreds of database servers. This gives me the unique perspective of having a broad knowledge of what customers expect from their database administration units. Name a market sector, and I would be highly surprised if we didn\u2019t have dozens of customers representing it. Our customers\u2019 technological strategies also vary widely. Some of our customers don\u2019t want to push the technological envelope while others want to stay at the forefront of every new technological advancement. I was responsible for running service delivery at RDX for over a dozen years. Our primary goal was, and still is, to be viewed as each customer\u2019s strategic partner. We never want to be seen as a \u201cutility provider\u201d (no added value, just keeping the lights on). Providing excellent technical support is absolutely the foundation and most critical facetof your job, and our jobs as database administrators, but it is only one facet. Is this just a \u201cremote DBA thing\u201d? Absolutely not! You know that your customers expect you to be the technical expert. If you aren\u2019t at the top of your game technically, you will never obtain credibility with them. But after you obtain that technical credibility \u2013 what\u2019s next? That will be the focus of my next set of articles. Will this require you to change your entire strategy? Once again, absolutely not. Here\u2019s a great quote that I often refer back to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSmall changes can produce big results – but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n – Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where do you start? How do you determine how you are viewed? Well, first, you need to know where you are starting from! Rest assured that as a DBA, you have the knowledge and skill sets at your disposal to become a strategic player in any organization. Your role as a DBA has already \u201cgreased that slide\u201d for you. The database\u2019s area of influence has expanded to a point where it has become the heart of the modern IT infrastructure. Databases provide the mechanism to store physical data along with business rules and executable business logic. The database also provides the communication programs for both client and server. The entire application environment (data storage, business rule enforcement, application program storage, communication, system monitoring) is controlled by the database. Over time, the database engine will store more information related to the understanding of the business, the meaning of the data stored (metadata) and the mechanisms to secure, control and track versions of data objects, access programs and related software. Enterprises expect the DBMS to be available, secure and high performance. As a result, the DBA already plays a pivotal role in the organization. The DBA is often seen as the \u201cGOTO\u201d technician because of their traditionally strong problem solving skills. In addition, the DBA is seen as the IT staff\u2019s technical generalist because of the working knowledge they have in many different facets of information technology:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In my next article, we\u2019ll take a look at business value drivers – what\u2019s important to them. As a member of the IT organization, you need to mate the value of your services to business value. IT has always shared a set of common goals with the business operations they support. Here are the goals and a few examples to jumpstart our upcoming discussion:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look for a more in-depth discussion of IT and business operations shared value drivers in the next article of this series. Thanks for reading! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":4377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n