Rethinking relational databases for modern enterprise growth
When looking at why enterprises are starting to outgrow relational databases, first understand why they adopted them to begin with. It’s no secret that relational databases are the gold standard for what I call AIR:
Accuracy, Integrity and Reliability.
AIR allows critical business operations to enforce strict data rules and uphold unmatched data integrity. To ensure relationships between customer data preventing duplication that may not be handled at the application level.
Not to mention the benefit of granular access control for user permissions on sensitive data, with the ability to meet compliance standards and regulations and the support of robust tooling for an expansive ecosystem. Providing a transactional system that can be scaled with accurate data measures and the ability to recover each transaction that supports the business.
For several years, we have seen enterprises struggle with the limitations of traditional relational databases as their data volumes and requirements continue to grow. Yet what we often find is that organizations have not outgrown relational databases, they have simply outgrown their current database technology. When a technology investment is made sometimes that decision is based on right now, instead of where we are going in the current year and beyond.
Aligning business growth with open source innovation
A striving business is one that can dynamically improve its products, strategy and adapt to the changing times. Opensource technology has the same approach to software development. Looking at your business needs and how they align to the growth of the PostgreSQL database may be the true answer.
With open source contributing an estimated $8.8 trillion to the global economy, if you’re not building on it, you’re paying for it somewhere else. Open source is considered to be the backbone of AI. The amount of data you collect and process with agents will still need AIR. PostgreSQL adoption may allow you to cut costs but it’s important to keep growing your business by staying true to your opensource adoption.
There is no need to delay the modernization and transformation projects any longer. If you’re slightly thinking you may have outgrown your relational database, take a look at some of the recent advancements of PostgreSQL and you can understand why it will be the truth of your business growth going forward allowing, you gain a strategic advantage or build AI models faster with more transparency.
Recent PostgreSQL advancements
- PostgreSQL 19
- Parallel autovacuum - Concurrently vacuum large databases preventing transaction ID wraparound.
- SQL/PGQ – property graph queries - Complex graph traversal queries
- Lock contention views - Realtime insights on lock contention for debugging performance
- PostgreSQL 18
- AIO – Asynchronous I/O - Improve throughput of read intensive workloads
- OAuth 2.0 Integration - Direct integration with SSO- single sign on replacing MD5
- B-Tree skip scan - Preventing full table scans filtering on non-leading columns
- PostgreSQL 17
- Enhanced SQL/JSON - Transform JSON data into tables within a query
- Optimized WAL handling - Increase throughput of higher write transaction limits
- pg_basebackup - Incremental backups
The path forward
Enterprises are not simply outgrowing relational databases. They are outgrowing legacy platforms that can no longer keep pace with modern business demands, rising data volumes, and the need to innovate faster.
PostgreSQL gives organizations a powerful foundation for modernization, combining proven relational database strengths with the performance, scalability, security, and extensibility needed for today’s enterprise workloads. It enables teams to reduce costs, simplify transformation, and build AI-ready data platforms without compromising the accuracy, integrity, and reliability that business-critical systems require.
For businesses ready to modernize, PostgreSQL is more than an alternative database. It is a strategic opportunity to unlock greater agility, support future innovation, and build a data foundation that can grow with the business.
The engineers who help build PostgreSQL can help you deploy, optimize, and support it.
Explore Fujitsu's PostgreSQL consulting services and put two decades of upstream expertise to work for your organization.
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