This time last year, I made six predictions for 2007. How did I do? Well, I’d say I nailed five of them. I was right about:
- An explosion in storage and, thus, database sizes. I’ve seen enterprises talking about petabyte SQL Server databases this year, for the first time ever.
- SQL Server expanding into a full data platform, which we see with PerformancePoint.
- Server and other technologies introduced by Microsoft.
- Hardware driving more virtualization.
- Shorter development cycles from Microsoft on SQL Server.
- Instability in the ISV ecosystem. Players like Oracle continue to gobble up every interesting technology vendor they can find.
But I'd say I missed the boat on predicting the “ebbing relevance of open source.” While open source databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL haven’t grabbed huge market share, they are stable fixtures in the marketplace and I see no reason for them to evaporate completely. They’ve found a niche and will, in my opinion, continue to do fairly well.
So here are the trends that I believe will emerge or solidify in 2008.
1.Rapid Adoption of SQL Server 2008
It’s no secret that SQL Server 2005 failed to achieve dazzling adoption and uptake. Although it was a solid release with many valuable features and performance improvements, it was hard-pressed to compete with the very solid SQL Server 2000 and a growing realization in enterprises that upgrades are disruptive and difficult. So when Microsoft held to its promise of a new release within 24 to 36 months of its last, many in the SQL Server community simply said, “Why rush to SQL2005, when I can wait a year for SQL2008?” This will result in pent-up demand for SQL Server 2008, so I expect to see SQL Server 2008 doing very well in virtually every sales metric - number of licenses sold, total revenue generated, number of new customers, number of EA/SA agreements, and so forth.
2.Ascension of 64-bit
The benefits of 64-bit hardware are well-documented. But despite the very real benefits and the minor cost difference, 32-bit CPUs were still de rigeur in 2007. I expect this to change in the very near future. While I cannot predict when Microsoft will begin to ship only 64-bit versions of their server platforms, they should begin to make the shift soon. It would be going out on a limb to predict a 64-bit-only CPU architecture for SQL Server, so I will just say that it will be the preferred architecture for production systems in 2008.
3.Virtualization
Everyone’s talking about virtualization - but while it offers great benefits such as cost savings, it doesn’t cure every problem in the data center and it can even introduce some new ones. Still, many shops are of the “one application, one server” mindset. I believe that 2008 will be the year that enterprises will replace their non-production SQL Server (QA, testing, training, etc.) physical machines with virtual machines in earnest. Incidentally, I believe that a lot of shops will also put production systems onto virtual machines and learn to regret the decision.
4.BI Battles
Business intelligence (BI) has been part of SQL Server since the SQL Server 2000 launch and has grown significantly. With recent acquisitions, Microsoft’s BI strategy must transform to go toe-to-toe with other BI vendors and not just market to the “faithful.” Microsoft must now convince enterprises using competing vendors to make the switch, which has been a challenge for them.
What’s nice to see is that these are the issues of a mature enterprise product, not of a struggling departmental database server. Looking forward to the year ahead!
About the Author
Kevin Kline is director of technology for SQL Server Solutions at Quest Software. A Microsoft SQL Server MVP, he is the current president of PASS, the Professional Association for SQL Server, and the author of SQL in a Nutshell and Transact-SQL Programming (O’Reilly & Associates). Kline is a frequent speaker at trade shows and has been active in the IT industry since 1986. More about PASS at www.sqlpass.org. More about Quest at www.quest.com.
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