Microsoft Launches SQL Server 2008 R2 to Help Companies Enhance the Decision-making Process
Survey reveals 73 per cent of Canadian firms agree business intelligence (BI) tools can help deliver stronger business insight
MISSISSAUGA, ON - April 21, 2010 - Microsoft Corp. today announced the release to manufacturing of Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2, one of the industry's most complete information platform for managing, accessing and delivering information to help businesses make better decisions. In Canada, the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA) South Central Ontario is leveraging the advanced business intelligence (BI) capabilities of the Microsoft SQL Server-based platform to better assess risk and accurately determine rates, policy renewals and special offers to their clients.
A recent survey conducted by The Strategic Council and sponsored by Microsoft reveals 73 per cent of Canadian business decision makers agree that empowering employees with the right tools to analyze business information can have a positive impact on the bottom line. In contrast, only 32 per cent of Canadian businesses, the survey shows, are currently using BI software to help turn business data into insight that can help fuel growth. According to the survey, the top barrier to deploying BI is cost.
"Today's release of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 helps bring BI to the masses in a cost effective way. In today's business environment, having the right information at your fingertips can give companies the edge needed to stay one step ahead of the competition," said Daniel Shapiro, senior product manager, Server & Tools Business Group, Microsoft Canada. "With enterprise class scalability and IT efficiency, SQL Server remains a value leader in the industry, offering rich, out-of-the-box, feature sets to customers - allowing any sized company to reap the benefits of BI."
Managed Self-Service Business Intelligence for Reporting and Analysis
With SQL Server 2008 R2, introduces powerful new managed self-service BI capabilities, bridging the gap between IT professionals and end users by leveraging familiar tools such as Microsoft Excel® 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint® Server 2010. With the new BI technology named PowerPivot, end users can bring data from virtually anywhere and manipulate large datasets with ease while still enabling IT to monitor and manage user-generated BI solutions.
And Canadian businesses are taking note. CAA South Central Ontario is looking forward to incorporating SQL Server 2008 R2 in their current BI solution based on SQL Server 2008.
"Insurance is all about calculating risk and pricing policies accordingly. As a relatively small organization, we have to be innovative to thrive within a competitive industry," says Jay Woo, COO, CAA South Central Ontario. "Our BI platform leverages SQL Server and gives our business a competitive edge by providing us with greater insight to better price our policies. We're now using BI to help reduce risk and ultimately make a more positive impact to our bottom line."
Enterprise-Class Scalability and Greater Visibility
With this release, Microsoft continues to focus on critical datacenter needs, enabling businesses to create a highly available infrastructure that is more secure and easier to manage. Recent benchmarks show that SQL Server 2008 R2 has raised the bar in performance on industry-standard hardware. With the introduction of SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter edition, in combination with Windows Server 2008 R2, customers can now run databases on systems with up to 256 logical processors, and move to a virtualized datacenter with Hyper-V and Live Migration support. These two releases will help customers move to a private cloud infrastructure that is highly available, consolidated and virtualized and that scales on demand.
Additional key enhancements in this release include two new components of Microsoft's information platform: SQL Server 2008 R2 Master Data Services, which helps customers drive better data consistency across heterogeneous systems, and SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight, which supports high-scale complex event-stream processing.
With the upcoming availability of SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse, customers will be able to scale-out their data warehouses from tens to hundreds of terabytes. SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse will be offered as an appliance in several configurations through select hardware providers.
Platform Integration Spanning the Datacenter to the Cloud
SQL Server 2008 R2 also represents a further commitment from Microsoft to the cloud. The power of SQL Server is extending to the cloud through Microsoft SQL Azure, which provides a consistent programming model, common capabilities and tools while offering new business opportunities, high availability, self-management and massive scale through distributed cloud data services. Microsoft's recent preview release of the service code-named "Dallas" enables customers to have access to rich new datasets from companies such as Pitney Bowes Inc., NASA and the Associated Press Online. With the capabilities in PowerPivot for Excel, combining private and public datasets for deeper analysis and business insight is much easier. SQL Server 2008 R2 delivers a complete approach to managing, accessing and delivering information across the organization. SQL Server 2008 R2 will be available to customers in early May through Microsoft's distribution and partner channels..
About Microsoft Canada
Established in 1985, Microsoft Canada Co. is the Canadian subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq "MSFT") the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft Canada provides nationwide sales, marketing, consulting and local support services in both French and English. Headquartered in Mississauga, Microsoft Canada has nine regional offices across the country dedicated to empowering people through great software - any time, any place and on any device. For more information on Microsoft Canada, please visit www.microsoft.ca.
For more information, please contact:
Isabella Mise
416-644-2293
imise@highroad.com
