7 August 2008

Microsoft has released SQL Server 2008, the new version of its data management and business intelligence platform to manufacturing. This version of SQL Server provides new capabilities such as support for policy-based management, auditing, large-scale data warehousing, geospatial data, and advanced reporting and analysis services.

“Microsoft developed this release of SQL Server with the customer in mind,” said Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the data and storage platform division at Microsoft. “SQL Server 2008 is the only major database that includes comprehensive, tightly integrated functionality for data management as well as advanced business intelligence out of the box. By offering a complete solution, we save customers time and money and allow them to focus on deriving the most value from their data assets.”

Already there have been more than 450,000 customer and partner downloads of SQL Server 2008’s community technology previews. Microsoft says that more than 75 large-scale applications are already in production and more than 1,350 applications are being developed by nearly 1,000 independent software vendors on SQL Server 2008.

Tim Whitehorn, founder and chief executive officer of event management software provider ServiceU, said, “We selected SQL Server 2008 because we can entrust it with our critical business applications. SQL Server 2008 is highly secure and reliable, and offers the best value on the market today. In addition, it accelerates the time frame for deploying new features and enhancements, and that to us makes SQL Server a winner.”

A number of enterprise customers from various industries are testing SQL Server 2008 including Clear Channel Communications, Fidelity Investments, Hilton Hotels, Simon & Schuster, Siemens and Xerox.

Microsoft says SQL Server is an industry leader in both scalability and performance and that it’s is the first and only database management system to be proven capable of delivering scalable results on TPC-E, the Transaction Processing Performance Council’s (TPC) newest and most challenging online transaction processing (OLTP) benchmark, with 13 published benchmarks to date.