130 Billion Reasons We Take Infrastructure Monitoring Seriously

By Buddy Flerl, CEO of DataStrike

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Most organizations don't go looking for a managed services partner until the existing coverage model has failed them in a way that's hard to dismiss. A critical system down overnight with no one qualified to respond, a platform falling behind on patches because the internal team was already at capacity, a performance problem compounding quietly for months before it finally surfaced as an incident. Those situations don't come out of nowhere. They come out of environments that weren't being watched closely enough, and DataStrike has spent 18 years building the coverage model that prevents exactly that, logging more than 130+ billion monitoring checks across client environments in the process.

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According to DataStrike's 2026 Data Infrastructure Survey, more than half of IT leaders say they lack internal resources to fix problems quickly or drive innovation, even as budgets continue to rise. The challenge isn't awareness that infrastructure needs attention. It's having the right expertise available consistently, including outside business hours, and making sure there's someone with the context to act when something surfaces at an inconvenient time. DataStrike's engineers are senior, U.S.-based, and assigned to specific client environments. They know the systems they manage, which means when something needs attention, they can act on it directly rather than working through a handoff process that adds time to every response. That model has held up across more than 200 clients over 18 years, and it's what sits behind every one of those 130 billion checks.

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One Partner Across the Full Data Estate

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DataStrike manages the environments that organizations depend on most across four practice areas: databases, cloud, enterprise applications, and business intelligence. Here’s a little more insight into each practice:

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Database Managed Services

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The database practice covers SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, SAP HANA, MariaDB, and Redshift, with senior DBAs accountable for the health and performance of each client environment around the clock.

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Cloud Managed Services

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On the cloud side, DataStrike manages AWS, Azure, and Oracle Cloud, covering performance, cost governance, security posture, and lifecycle management across environments that tend to grow in complexity faster than internal teams can keep pace with.

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Application Managed Services

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For enterprise applications, Oracle EBS, WebLogic, WebSphere, and Microsoft SharePoint are managed as a full stack alongside the infrastructure they depend on, which matters when something fails and the cause turns out to be in the layer below the application rather than in the application itself.

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Business Intelligence Managed Services

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The BI and data platform practice covers Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, and Power BI from implementation through ongoing operations, and it's where the intersection of infrastructure management and AI readiness is most visible. Organizations investing in AI are quickly finding that the quality of what they get out depends entirely on the quality of what goes in. Data pipelines that aren't well governed, databases that aren't properly maintained, and cloud environments that have drifted from their original architecture all create compounding problems for AI systems built on top of them.  

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Getting AI initiatives to perform reliably in production requires the same disciplined infrastructure management that keeps any other critical system running, and it requires it to be in place before the AI layer is built, not after something starts producing results nobody can explain. DataStrike's approach to BI and data platform management is built around giving organizations a data estate that's clean, well-governed, and consistently performing, so that whatever gets built on top of it has a foundation worth building on.

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What the Fractional Model Actually Delivers

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Building a full internal team of senior engineers across all four of those disciplines is a significant undertaking in the current market, and most mid-market organizations find that the demand for that expertise outpaces what they can reasonably hire and retain. The cost of carrying senior DBAs, cloud architects, and BI engineers full-time is difficult to justify when workloads aren't consistent enough to keep a large team fully occupied, and the competition for that talent makes it harder still. The fractional model gives organizations access to senior expertise across database, cloud, application, and BI environments without that overhead. Coverage is 100 percent U.S.-based, and the same engineers stay assigned to each environment over the life of the engagement rather than rotating in and out on a schedule that resets institutional knowledge every time it turns over.

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That continuity matters more than it might seem. The problems that are hardest to catch aren't the ones that trigger an alert. They're the ones that develop gradually, across weeks or months, in ways that only become recognizable once someone has been watching long enough to understand what normal looks like for that specific environment. DataStrike was founded in 2008 on the premise that mid-market organizations deserve a partner that takes that kind of operational ownership seriously, and 130 billion monitoring checks across more than 200 clients over 18 years is what that commitment looks like in practice.

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Learn More

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If your organization is evaluating managed services options for database, cloud, application, or BI environments, DataStrike is ready to have that conversation.  

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

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What does DataStrike monitor across client environments?

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DataStrike monitors continuously across database performance, cloud infrastructure, security posture, backup integrity, and application health, reviewing thousands of data points per environment. The focus is on catching issues early, before they affect users or escalate into incidents.

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What does around-the-clock coverage mean in practice?

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It means a senior engineer who knows the client's environment is reachable and accountable when something happens outside business hours, with the authority to act without waiting for an escalation chain to respond. The gap between a monitoring alert and a qualified response is where coverage either holds up or doesn't.

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What databases and platforms does DataStrike support?

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DataStrike supports a broad range of platforms across all four practice areas and doesn't favor any single vendor.

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• Databases: SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, SAP HANA, MariaDB, Amazon Redshift
• Cloud: AWS, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, Snowflake
• BI and data platforms: Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI
• Applications: Oracle EBS, Oracle WebLogic, WebSphere, Microsoft SharePoint

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How does the fractional model work?

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Fractional support gives organizations access to senior engineers across database, cloud, and BI disciplines without the cost and overhead of building a full internal team. DataStrike sizes coverage to what a client actually needs, and the same engineers stay assigned to the environment over time, building working knowledge that compounds as the engagement continues.

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How is DataStrike different from larger generalist providers?

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Every DataStrike engineer is U.S.-based, with more than 90 percent working out of the Pittsburgh headquarters. The engineers who scope an engagement are the ones who manage it. Clients aren't handed off to a rotating pool of contacts or routed through a generalist support tier.

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What engagement models are available?

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DataStrike works with clients across fully managed, fractional, project-based, and emergency response models. Fully managed means end-to-end operational responsibility. Fractional fills coverage gaps or adds senior depth alongside an existing team. Project-based engagements address migrations, upgrades, and modernization on a defined scope. Emergency response provides rapid escalation for critical incidents that exceed internal capacity.

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How long does onboarding typically take?

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Infrastructure monitoring is typically operational within one to two weeks. Engineers start building working knowledge of the environment from day one, which means clients reach effective coverage faster than they would with providers that rely on documentation handoffs and rotating staff.

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Buddy Flerl is the CEO of DataStrike, a data platform managed services firm serving mid-market IT leaders across the full data estate including databases, cloud, analytics, and AI infrastructure. DataStrike is headquartered in Warrendale, PA.