This assignment is a business-driven decision-making exercise about evaluating Database as a Service (DAAS) (DAAS is briefly discussed this week. You can also search online for more resources).

Ticketmaster is a global ticket retailer selling hundreds of millions of tickets to every type of show and venue with total revenue exceeding $8 billion/year. In 2010, it merged with Live Nation to become Live Nation Entertainment. Customer demand for tickets is very uneven with extremely high demand during the first hours of ticket availability for a popular event, followed by a significant decline in demand. This results in a very uneven demand on computing resources which is difficult to meet. In addition, any system downtime is extremely expensive and can result in lost sales approaching $1 million per hour.

Questions:

1. What are the pros and cons for Ticketmaster to move its database operations to a Database as a Service provider?
2. What potential data management issues might arise in this transition?
3. Who should be involved in making this decision?