How NoSQL Databases Help Scale Businesses

The collecting, storing, and analyzing of data has become a top priority for businesses across all industries. Because of data’s importance in the modern business landscape, data scientists are in high demand in finance, healthcare, technology, and retail, as companies look to remain agile and competitive. 

The vast amounts of data that can be collected have led to an increasing demand for databases that can harvest this information and use it to help businesses grow. One database that is becoming increasingly popular for businesses looking to scale is the NoSQL database. 

NoSQL databases are different from traditional databases because they include a relational mechanism for storing and retrieving structured and unstructured data that is modeled in means other than tabular relations. With 80% of all data now unstructured, businesses are capitalizing on the ability of NoSQL databases to store this type of data. This is why the global NoSQL market size is predicted to reach $86.3 billion by 2032, and a big reason for this global demand is how they can seamlessly help scale businesses.

Horizontal Scalability

A key defining feature of a NoSQL database is how it is able to seamlessly scale. Unlike relational databases, which are only designed for vertical scaling, NoSQL databases are designed for both vertical and horizontal scaling. Vertical scaling is where a database can grow by adding new hardware, such as investing in more RAM or upgrading to a faster CPU. However, this means that the database has limitations on how much it can scale. If a business is looking to massively scale, it would need to keep adding more hardware, which could lead to performance issues. Horizontal scaling increases computing capacity by adding more nodes to a system. Instead of upgrading a single server with more powerful hardware, like vertical scaling, horizontal scaling distributes the workload across multiple machines. This allows a business to easily increase its data storage capabilities, which is essential if they are scaling up. 

High Performance

The more a business scales, the more data it will need to acquire, which in turn means that it needs a database system that can handle large volumes of data, high traffic, and specific data models. This is why NoSQL databases prioritize high throughput (number of operations per second) and low latency (response time), making them efficient at handling large data sets. NoSQL databases are also used for real-time analytics, instant messaging, and live feeds, which require sub-millisecond response times that traditional databases struggled to deliver consistently at scale. As a result, a business can use a NoSQL database to scale with little risk that its data management system will have any performance issues.  

Flexible Schema

While the amount of data that can be collected is growing, the types of data that can be harvested are also increasing. Modern data includes documents, images, videos, emails, and even social media posts. NoSQL databases are often multi-model databases that support more than one type of NoSQL data model. The main NoSQL data model types are document, key-value, wide-column, and graph, and by combining them under one database, this allows developers to choose which model to use based on their application requirements. This flexibility is beneficial when dealing with businesses that are constantly scaling their operations.

Cost-Effective

NoSQL databases are cost-effective because they are designed to scale out rather than scale up. As mentioned above, traditional relational databases require hardware upgrades to handle more data and traffic, but NoSQL databases can be distributed across many low-cost servers without investing in new hardware. This distributed architecture reduces the need for costly infrastructure. As a result, this can have a massive impact on helping scale businesses, especially startups with lower overheads. Additionally, the schema-less nature of many NoSQL models allows for rapid development and deployment, reducing time-to-market and development costs as developers can easily adapt the database structure to meet changing business requirements without major overhauls. For scaling businesses, these factors make NoSQL a good financial option, especially for companies expecting rapid growth or dynamic data needs.

As data plays an increasingly important role in how businesses grow, more and more companies are turning to NoSQL databases. The ability to horizontally scale, handle large data demands through their flexible schema, and be cost-effective make NoSQL databases ideal for scaling businesses.