Today you can use hosted MySQL/MariaDB/Percona Server for MySQL/PostgreSQL in several "cloud providers" as a database as a service (DBaaS). Learn the differences, the access methods and the level of control you have for the various public cloud offerings:
- Amazon RDS including Aurora
- Google Cloud SQL
- Rackspace OpenStack DBaaS
- Oracle Cloud's MySQL Service

The administration tools and ideologies behind each are completely different, and you are in a "locked-down" environment. Some considerations include:
- Different backup strategies
- Planning for multiple data centres for availability
- Where do you host your application?
- How do you get the most performance out of the solution?
- What does this all cost?
- Monitoring

Growth topics include:
- How do you move from one DBaaS to another?
- How do you move from a DBaaS to your own hosted platform?