Microsoft Elevates Mission-Critical Commitment With New SQL Server 2008 R2 Premium Editions, Delivery of November CTP

REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- During a community address at the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Community Summit, Microsoft Corp.'s Ted Kummert, senior vice president of the Business Platform Division, announced the upcoming delivery of the November community technology preview (CTP) of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2. Microsoft also announced two new editions providing a high level of scalable solutions: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse (formerly project code-named "Madison"). To help customers continue to realize greater value with SQL Server 2008, Kummert also noted that Microsoft is delivering data warehouse appliances with multiple hardware partners, announcing IBM Corp. as the newest partner. IBM will offer three hardware configurations as a part of SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse 2.0. HP, Bull and Dell Inc. also announced new configurations for version 2.0.

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"Microsoft's vision is to deliver an information platform enabling all businesses to gain strategic value from information," Kummert said. "Companies are looking to compete and grow by reducing costs and identifying the highest value opportunities for their business. We're moving forward rapidly to address these challenges with new capabilities in manageability, business intelligence, data warehousing and the first relational database cloud offering in SQL Azure."

SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP
SQL Server 2008 R2 continues to deliver on Microsoft's vision of a complete approach to managing information assets, with customers already realizing the benefits.

"Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 is fundamentally helping to improve our relationship with our customers," said Carolyn Conti, manager of Decision Support Systems at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. "Using SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel and SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint Server as an interface for managed self-service business intelligence (BI), we are modeling, analyzing and pivoting millions of records, publishing the information in minutes, and allowing access for geographically remote office branches at a fraction of the time. Our business users can now create and modify their own reports to meet their immediate needs and better service the customer."

SQL Server 2008 R2 is the next-generation information platform that is designed to deliver the following:

• Managed self-service business intelligence. Expanding powerful BI tools to all users with SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel and empowering a new class of business users to build and share powerful BI solutions with little or no IT support, while still enabling IT to monitor and manage user-generated BI solutions
• Greater IT and developer efficiency. Enabling administrators to centrally monitor and manage multiple database applications, instances or servers, accelerating the development and deployment of applications and providing improved support for virtualization through Hyper-V with Live Migration in Windows Server 2008 R2
• A trusted and scalable platform. Supporting data consistency across heterogeneous systems through SQL Server Master Data Services, enabling high-scale complex event-stream processing through SQL Server StreamInsight, and supporting scale-up scenarios for the largest available x64 and Itanium hardware (up to 256 logical processors)
  

SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP will be available for download in November. More information and the sign-up for the CTP are available at http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2-editions.aspx.

New Editions of SQL Server for High-End, Mission-Critical Scenarios
Microsoft is introducing two new offerings for high-scale, mission-critical applications. SQL Server R2 Datacenter delivers a high-performing information platform that provides high levels of scalability for large application workloads and managing an organization's database infrastructure. With support for up to 256 logical processors and unlimited virtualization, SQL Server Datacenter and Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter provide a foundation on which to build enterprise-class solutions.

SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse extends Microsoft's offering in data warehousing by providing scalability and performance from tens to hundreds of terabytes at a low total cost of ownership (TCO). SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse will be available on industry-standard hardware from Bull, Dell, HP, EMC and IBM.

Benchmarks Demonstrate Enterprise Scalability in Online Transaction Processing and Data Warehousing
Benchmarks announced today with partners Unisys Corp., IBM and Intel demonstrate the enterprise scalability of SQL Server 2008 R2. First, a new world-record TPC-E benchmark result running on a Unisys ES7000 Model 7600R Enterprise Server set a performance record of 2,012 tpsE (transactions per second for the TPC-E benchmark) on a 96-core Xeon platform, the first result on a server with more than 64 cores. Second, the same Unisys server achieved 102,778 QphH (queries per hour) on the TPC-H 3TB benchmark, showing data warehousing performance 70 percent higher than the previous record on Windows Server. Finally, a Microsoft Dynamics CRM benchmark run on IBM System x3650 M2 servers with Intel Solid State Drives demonstrated 20,000 concurrent users across 20 xRM applications on Microsoft Dynamics CRM with an average response time of 0.10 seconds.

A New Partnership With IBM
Since its introduction in February 2009, SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse has enabled companies in a wide range of industries to accelerate their data warehousing projects, and achieve high scalability at a low TCO. Microsoft is releasing Fast Track Data Warehouse version 2.0, with new configurations from IBM, and updated configurations from Bull, Dell and HP. Version 2.0 offers more choice with up to 12 reference architectures based on both Intel- and AMD-based processors, better performance from the latest Intel and AMD processors and up to 48 cores per server, and better scalability with up to 48 terabytes of user data capacity.

In addition, IBM will now offer three Fast Track Data Warehouse reference configurations for the company's Intel processor-based System x servers, as well as a leading midrange storage disk offerings from IBM.

EMC Corp., a full service consulting and storage partner, also will offer new Data Warehouse and BI services for Fast Track in addition to storage infrastructure for Dell Fast Track Data Warehouse solutions.

SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse offers a seamless transition to customers planning to make the leap to the massive scalability and powerful BI capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse.

More information on Microsoft's Data Warehousing offerings can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/fasttrack.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 will be available in the first half of 2010. More information about it can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2-editions.aspx.

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Transaction Processing Performance Council (www.tpc.org) benchmark results as of 11/02/09. Unisys ES7000 Model 7600R Enterprise Server; TPC-E: 2,012 tpsE, 958.23 $/tpsE; TPC-H: 102,778 QphH@3TB, 21.05 $/QphH@3TB; available 5/6/2010.