SQL Server 2008 R2 Released to Manufacturing!

April 20, 2010

We are very excited to share that today, Microsoft released SQL Server 2008 R2 to manufacturing! Customers can expect availability in the next few weeks through Microsoft’s distribution channels. For more information, visit www.sqlserverlaunch.com.

SQL Server 2008 R2 enhancements continue to support mission-critical workloads providing a trusted, scalable platform, increased developer and IT efficiency and managed self-service business intelligence reporting and analytics. It is for these very reasons that SQL Server 2008 R2 is setting records for performance and price/performance on industry standard benchmarks.

SQL Server 2008 R2, as part of Microsoft’s complete information platform, makes gathering, managing and using business information easier and more cost-effective for businesses. Some of the capabilities that customers and partners will benefit from include:

PowerPivot: a managed self-service analysis solution that empowers end users to access, analyze and share data across the enterprise in an IT managed environment using Excel 2010 and SharePoint Sever 2010.
Master Data Services: helps IT organizations centrally manage critical data assets companywide and across diverse systems, and enables more people to securely manage master data directly, and ensure the integrity of information over time.
Application and Multi-server Management: helps organizations proactively manage database environments efficiently at scale through centralized visibility into resource utilization and streamlined consolidation and upgrade initiatives across the application lifecycle.
Report Builder 3.0: report authoring component with support for geospatial visualization. This new release provides capabilities to further increase end user productivity with enhanced wizards, more powerful visualizations, and intuitive authoring.
StreamInsight: a low latency complex event processing platform to help IT monitor, analyze and act on the data in motion to make more informed business decisions in near real-time.

The customer engagement in the development process of SQL Server 2008 R2 was outstanding, with more than 300,000 downloads of the technology previews. Customers including Bank of New Zealand, PREMIER Bankcard, Studio Moderna and CareGroup Healthcare System are already taking advantage of the new scalability, BI and manageability features in SQL Server 2008 R2. Furthermore, more than 2,000 global ISVs are delivering applications worldwide. A few of these partners include SafeNet, Inc., Brocade, Stratus Technologies, Dassault Systèmes, ESRI and OSIsoft, LLC.

Customer Studio Moderna, a direct response marketing network in Central and Eastern Europe, has complex operations that require fast and decentralized decision making – placing heavy demands on its IT systems. The company is building a solution based on SQL Server 2008 R2 PowerPivot that will consolidate data from multiple IT systems into “one version of the truth,” as well as lower costs and reduce users’ reliance on the IT staff. “SQL Server 2008 R2 will empower our employees to make decentralized decisions faster and more reliably,” said Sandi Češko, Chairman, Studio Moderna.

Partner SafeNet provides organizations using SQL Server 2008 R2 with additional security features to help meet evolving data threats and compliance mandates. Chris Fedde, president and COO of SafeNet, explains that “The integration of our hardware security modules (HSM) security features with SQL Server 2008 R2 is an ideal solution for any end user organization that is focused on providing a secure operating environment, installing upgrades quickly and seamlessly, and meeting compliance standards.”

To explore what’s new in the SQL Server 2008 R2 release, please visit the SQL Server 2008 R2 Digital Tour at www.sqlserverlaunch.com. Additionally, remember to use the #SQLR2 hashtag when Tweeting all SQL Server 2008 R2 related news!

Additional Resources: