Software giant Microsoft has announced that more than 450,000 downloads have been recorded, to date, of the newly-launched version of SQL Server 2008.

According to the Microsoft, SQL Server 2008 is only major database that includes comprehensive, integrated functionality for data management as well as advanced business intelligence out of the box.

Speaking in Malaysia during the TechEd event in Kuala Lumpur, which attracted more than 3,200 participants, Microsoft Asia Pacific general manager, Server & Tools, Chris Sharp, said that the database management system provides new capabilities. These include support for policy-based management, auditing, large-scale data warehousing, geospatial data, and advanced reporting and analysis services, including help organizations with BI needs.

Sharp said that, with the strong growth in partner downloads of SQL Server 2008's Community Technology Previews (CTPs), more than 75 large-scale applications already in production and some 1350 applications being developed by nearly 1000 ISVs on SQL Server 2008, customers and partners are excited about the capabilities now available in SQL Server 2008.

SQL Server is a key component of Microsoft's Application Platform, a suite of products and technologies designed to help customers build, run and manage dynamic business applications.

Strong growth expected for Microsoft in BI market, say analysts

Research company Forrester's Noel Yuhanna said: "Microsoft is [one of] the only vendor[s] with top enterprise search and business intelligence reporting capabilities. It offers strong support for aggregation, summarization, search engine and dashboards. Transactions across distributed data sources and long-running transactions are also strengths for Microsoft."

Analyst firm Gartner's "Market Share: Business Intelligence Platform Software, Asia Pacific and Japan, 2007 report, said that Microsoft leads the market with 20.13 percent market share, growing by 25.5 percent to reach US$68.4 million in BI software revenues in Asia Pacific. The company also doubled its revenues over the previous year in Vietnam, and leads the BI industry in Malaysia with more than 40 percent in software revenues, compared to its nearest competitor.

Research firm IDC Malaysia analyst, Roger Ling, said: "Based on IDC's recent report Worldwide Relational Database Management Systems Revenue by Vendor, 2007, although the top three vendors had somewhat similar growth rates, Microsoft was leading the pack in terms of year-on-year growth. IDC sees similar trends in Malaysia and most Asia/Pacific countries, where the RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) market growth ranges between one to 30 percent."

LexisNexis group subsidiary Applied Discovery's vice president of IT & development, Gary Oberg, said: "We saw a 35 percent improvement in throughput on the system that we upgraded to SQL Server 2008, with no code changes on our end! This translates straight to the bottom line for us, as the more documents we can upload, the more we can process."

Regarding pricing and value, Sharp said, "In view of the economic scenario, we are still maintaining our prices for the new release of SQL Server although it now comes with richer features and functionalities -- in contrast to some other companies which have raised theirs by 15 percent."

» posted by ITworld staff

Computerworld Malaysia

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