Microsoft has announced that SQL Server 2008 R2 has been released to manufacturing and customers can expect availability in the next few weeks through Microsoft's distribution channels. According to Microsoft, SQL Server 2008 R2 represents a continued commitment to mission-critical workloads, providing a scalable platform, increased developer and IT efficiency and managed self-service business intelligence.
In a teleconference launching the latest release, Ted Kummert, senior vice president of the Business Platform Division, Microsoft, noted that R2 comes just 20 months since the release of SQL Server 2008. "We are very proud of this accomplishment and look forward to getting this release in the hands of our customers."
SQL Server 2008 R2 delivers on the challenges and opportunities in front of Microsoft customers, said Kummert. "SQL Server 2008 R2 is an important next step for us and our customers."
"We think about four themes as we build SQL Server," Kummert explained. One is delivering a mission-critical platform. "SQL Server 2008 R2 is built on a strong foundation of quality, security, reliability, performance and scalability in SQL Server 2008 and we have continued to enhance that in R2."
A second major theme is to empower IT by supporting the IT and database professionals that build their careers on SQL Server. "Our mission here is to continue to automate the routine, to enable them to have time to focus on the work that adds additional value to the business."
A third theme is dynamic development, enabling the development community with great runtimes and tools, reoriented toward reducing time to solution and enabling richer solutions.
The last theme is pervasive insight, which, said Kummert, "is about every end user and our mission to enable them to gain insights they need from the data in their environment and to do so quickly."
Key capabilities in SQL Server 2008 R2 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 (MDS), an "any domain" hub that helps organizations standardize and streamline the business data used enterprise-wide; application and multi-server management, SMP scale up with support for up to 256 logical processors; Report Builder 3.0 with support for geospatial visualization; and StreamInsight, a low latency complex event processing platform.
There were more than 300,000 downloads of the technology previews leading up to the final GA release of SQL Server 2008 R2, and more than 2,000 global ISVs are delivering applications worldwide.
To learn more about the SQL Server 2008 R2 release to manufacturing, visit the SQL Server Team Blog here and the SQL Server 2008 R2 Digital Tour website here.