A recent survey by computing.co.uk of 150 IT professionals in medium to large organisations showed many companies inefficiently deploy a high number of different databases (about one for every 20 employees on average).
The survey highlighted that many separate departments, branch offices and subsidiaries often run their own standalone enterprise applications that are usually located on dedicated hardware and sit atop their own proprietary silos of data. These databases have usually been formed on an adhoc and periphery basis but if they perform a useful function can end up central to the day to day running of the business. Scarily the larger the organisation the more their daily operations seem to rely on this “mishmash” of databases.

These databases are an accident waiting to happen and can pose a huge business risk if for example the server fails, the database grows too big or even the person who built or maintains it leaves the company, taking all their knowledge of the “home-grown” database with them.

By deploying 1000s of individual platforms and file systems businesses are also denying themselves a major potential competitive advantage because they cannot see the bigger picture. This makes it almost impossible for them to stay responsive, agile and competitive.
Additionally many organisations do not realise that there can be a huge, relatively hidden cost behind each of these databases.
Maintenance & development costs can easily equate to £50,000 per database, per year.
If businesses were to do a full review of all of their applications they would find that often one person in the department is working on the database approximately three days per week. Therefore, immediately producing a maintenance cost equal to 3/5’s of that person’s salary. This does not even begin to take into account the costs associated with loss of productivity if the database was to break down or the scaling up of this amount per database throughout the organisation.
A number of our clients have found great success through moving these multiple databases on to a single NAV database.
This virtualisation allows organisations to be quick and responsive to changing market conditions. They have the detailed knowledge they need not only of their markets but of their entire business so that they can spot opportunities and move quickly to exploit them. Costs, bottlenecks and problems can also be easily identified early enough so that they do not interfere with operations.
This centralisation also has the major advantage of huge cost savings through much lower annual maintenance and development costs.
NAV 2013 brings all the benefits of virtualisation:
 Reduced number of databases to manage, maintain & develop
 Decreased business risk
 Only one database language for the company to learn – efficiencies of NAV development environment
 Everybody working from the same figures
 Central storage
 True annual cost savings
NAV 2013 limited user 1/6th of the full price.
The new limited user package means companies can invest in NAV 2013 for 1/6th of the full price. And the web client gives employees the ability to access the database from pretty much anywhere – through their laptop, IPAD, or even their iPhone or android device.
If you’re interested in finding out how NAV 2013 can make your business more efficient and responsive, come visit us.