TechEd North America is upon us today and we couldn’t be more thrilled. Microsoft continues to evolve and invest in the Information Platform and today during the TechEd Foundational Session, Microsoft SQL Server: The Data and BI Platform for Today and Tomorrow, Quentin Clark, Corporate Vice President  spoke to the Microsoft Cloud-Ready Information Platform.

The data explosion is happening at every level across every imaginable device, application and individual. Meanwhile IT needs to balance the proliferation of applications, globalization, increasingly powerful commodity hardware, demand for accessible insights, and new form factors such as the cloud, appliances and mobile devices. And they have to do this with an uptime and level of compliance that is simply expected.

The next wave of SQL Server investments brings customers a Cloud-Ready Information Platform that will help them tackle the data explosion and evolve into the future through integrated private and public cloud offerings, optimized appliances, complete and scalable data warehouse offerings, scalable end-to-end  business intelligence, and of course continued investments in the SQL Server database software.

So what does this mean? Well, it means you can start to break free from tradition and move the business forward with mission critical confidence, breakthrough insight and cloud on your terms.

  • Mission-Critical Confidence
    The cloud-ready information platform will protect an organization’s infrastructure – getting you the nines and performance you need at the right price, especially for mission critical workloads, with the new availability solution, SQL Server AlwaysOn and blazing-fast performance with Project “Apollo.” With Microsoft, customers reduce the need to trade off uptime for security patching– SQL Server continues to lead major database vendors with the fewest number of vulnerabilities [nist.org] and in turn this reduces the need to sacrifice uptime for patching. Customers who bet on Microsoft get more than a trusted platform; they get a trusted business partner and a huge ecosystem of experienced vendors.
  • Breakthrough Insight
    Customers will quickly unlock breakthrough insights across thousands of users through highly interactive web-based data visualizations with Project “Crescent,” as seen in the TechEd keynote, managed self-service analytics with PowerPivot, and unified with the new BI semantic model. Insights are backed by credible consistent data made possible by new Data Quality Services and complete data warehousing solutions including Parallel Data Warehouse and Fast Track.
  • Cloud On Your Terms
    Additionally, SQL Server will offer organizations the agility to quickly create and scale solutions that solve challenges and fuel new business opportunity from server to private or public cloud linked together by common tools—build once, deploy and manage wherever with SQL Server Developer Tools code name “Juneau.”

What does cloud-ready mean for you?
SQL Server Code Name “Denali” will help customers bridge applications and workloads from traditional servers to private cloud to public cloud. Customers can take advantage of private and public clouds by scaling on demand with flexible deployment options, a common set of developer tools, and solutions to extend the reach of data across private and public cloud environments. SQL Server Code Name “Denali” will deliver key features that help customers move to the cloud when they are ready and without the need to rewrite or retool investments.

  • Scale on demand with flexible deployment options:  A common architecture which spans traditional, private cloud and public cloud environments giving customers the ability to scale beyond the constraints of any one environment for maximum flexibility in deployments
  • Fast time to market:  A range of options for rapidly provisioning resources  and reducing IT burden including Fast Track reference architectures to build private cloud solutions, pre-configured and optimized SQL Server appliances for ready-made solutions, and public cloud data services with SQL Azure
  • Common set of tools across on-premises and cloud:  Integrated set of developer tools and management tools for developing and administering applications across private cloud and public cloud giving developers and IT professionals maximum productivity, faster time to solution and lower on-ramp to building cloud solutions. Also, enhancements to the Data-tier Application Component (DAC) introduced in SQL Server 2008 R2 further simplify the management and movement of databases from on premises to cloud.
  • Solutions to extend the reach of data:  Support for technologies such as SQL Azure Data Sync to synchronize data across private and public cloud environments, OData to expose data through open feeds to power multiple user experiences and Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket to monetize data or consume from multiple data providers.

Get ready for the evolution
The next SQL Server Code Name “Denali” CTP is coming this summer! Sign up today for the notification and be among the first to test the exciting new features and functionality.