On the second day of Microsoft® Tech•Ed 2005, Microsoft Corp. continued to speak about the investments the company and industry partners are making across its products to ensure that IT organizations can effectively leverage the Microsoft platform and existing skill sets to maximize value, reduce cost and complexity, and ease the deployment of new applications. As part of the keynote address, Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Server Applications at Microsoft, showed the company’s continued momentum in preparation for the launch of SQL Server™ 2005, Visual Studio® 2005 and BizTalk® Server 2006, and announced that these products will be formally launched during the week of Nov. 7. This launch represents a significant milestone and demonstrates Microsoft’s commitment to delivering the next-generation platform for connected systems that provides unparalleled developer productivity, ability to effectively handle mission-critical applications and an infrastructure to provide better insight into business decisions.
“Our goal is to empower customers to act on data and applications so they can drive revenue growth as they never thought possible before,” Flessner said. “By delivering an application platform for connected systems, these products will help jump-start growth in IT by enabling customers and partners to utilize new tools to increase operational efficiencies and become more competitive through greater insight into their business.”
During the keynote address, Flessner also highlighted customer and partner momentum for Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 and touted the first public Community Technology Preview (CTP) for SQL Server 2005, new business intelligence (BI) functionality for SQL Server 2005, the new SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA), and the first benchmarks for SQL Server 2005. Of particular note, Flessner announced the first TPC-C benchmark for Windows Server™ in excess of 1 million tpmC using an early build of SQL Server 2005 running on an HP Integrity Superdome. This breakthrough result of 1,082,203 tpmC is 38 percent higher than SQL Server 2000 with over 7 percent higher performance and 35 percent less cost per transaction than Oracle 10g on an HP Integrity Superdome. Flessner also outlined Microsoft’s RFID initiative and outlined the 2006 updates to the Windows Server System™ Common Engineering Criteria. These technical standards are designed to deliver a consistent and predictable experience across Microsoft’s breadth of server products, and help reduce the complexity and costs associated with deploying and managing the systems infrastructure so that IT professionals can better serve the needs of the business.
Customers Already Adopting SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005
Throughout his keynote address, Flessner cited a host of customers and partners that see substantial potential in Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 even in their beta releases. With these products, Microsoft is helping developers and IT professionals adjust to rapidly evolving business requirements by providing unprecedented developer productivity, connecting customers, partners and employees with the information they need to drive better business and buying decisions, and ensuring readiness to handle the most demanding mission-critical applications.
“We have been using Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 for several months and have already seen a significant increase in our ability to be productive,” said Steve Schlonski, chief engineer of Xerox Office Services. “We are better equipped to meet our most demanding developer needs and put the right information into the hands of our users who need it to make better business decisions. This is a major competitive differentiator for us because we are spending less time understanding the technology and more time delivering new value to our customers.”
In addition to Xerox, Microsoft has seven other customers that have also put SQL Server 2005 into production, and Microsoft expects more than 20 customers will have implemented SQL Server 2005 by the launch. Microsoft also continues to deploy SQL Server 2005 internally, with more than 80 applications that store and analyze multiple terabytes of data.
As further evidence of SQL Server 2005 performance, Microsoft also announced the first TPC-H benchmarks for SQL Server 2005 with HP, NEC Corp. and Bull. These companies are leading the way in demonstrating the power that SQL Server 2005 will provide. Although conducted using early builds of SQL Server 2005, the benchmarks exemplify the performance and cost benefits customers can expect to experience with SQL Server 2005 compared with earlier versions of SQL Server and competitors. In three TPC-H benchmarks, SQL Server 2005 had up to 162 percent higher performance than SQL Server 2000 and 38 percent higher performance than Oracle’s best result on a 16-processor Intel Itanium 2 server at a cost that is 20 percent less per query. In yet another TPC-H benchmark result, NEC demonstrated the scalability of SQL Server 2005 with a result of 20,261 QphH (queries per hour) on a 32-processor NEC Express5800/1320Xe, showing nearly four times the best performance of SQL Server 2000. HP posted a TPC-C result on SQL Server 2005 that is the highest TPC-C result ever for Windows, beating the 1 million transaction-per-minute mark. This result had over 7 percent better performance and cost 35 percent less per transaction than Oracle’s best result on HP Integrity Superdome.
Microsoft also is working closely with partners to prepare for the availability of SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006. Today, nearly 40 partners, including Altiris Inc., Computer Associates International Inc., DeKlarit, Quest Software Inc., and Red Gate Software Limited, announced plans to support the availability of both Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. A complete list of partners that are making announcements related to Visual Studio and SQL Server can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/teched/partner.mspx.
Microsoft Releases First Public CTP for SQL Server 2005
In preparation for the launch of SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006, Microsoft has been working with customers and partners to gather early feedback on these products. Continuing this practice, Microsoft released the June Community Technology Preview (CTP) SQL Server 2005. The SQL Server 2005 June CTP is the first prerelease version of SQL Server 2005 that is available to the public and can be downloaded at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/downloads.
With this CTP, customers and partners will be able to test the business intelligence components included in SQL Server 2005. To increase customers’ and partners’ abilities to utilize business insight capabilities, Flessner also announced that Microsoft will extend SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services from Standard and Enterprise Editions to all versions of SQL Server 2005, including Express and Workgroup Editions. In addition, SQL Server 2005 Report Builder will be available with Workgroup, Standard and Enterprise Editions.
To meet the needs of customers asking to migrate from Oracle to the lower TCO SQL Server data platform, Microsoft released the SQL Server Migration Assistant. Several customers including Motorola Inc., Simon & Schuster Inc., Atento Brasil S/A and TransCanadian Pipelines Ltd. have successfully migrated to SQL Server 2000 and saw up to 80 percent reduction in the manual processing associated with past migrations. The SQL Server Migration Assistant is available free at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/migration.
