Modern businesses face the challenge of maintaining innovation while reducing IT costs, with a significant portion of their budget dedicated to data management. A report highlights the potential of distributed SQL databases, like CockroachDB, to deliver substantial savings by automating many of the manual, labor-intensive tasks associated with traditional relational databases. Interviews with seven companies, including a Fortune 50 financial services firm and a major logistics company, reveal that switching to CockroachDB can reduce operational costs by nearly 70%, saving millions annually. This is achieved despite higher licensing fees, as the distributed nature of CockroachDB eliminates hidden costs related to manual scaling, sharding, and maintenance, freeing up engineering resources for more value-generating activities. For example, companies have found they could redirect 22% of their data management efforts to other projects, leading to cost savings and efficiency gains ranging from $0.53 million for startups to $8 million for larger enterprises.