Microsoft SQL Server 2005: Scales to your growing business needs
Published: November 10, 2005
To stay competitive in today's marketplace, financial services organizations need their database systems to perform as quickly and efficiently as possible. Besides reducing operational costs, a data management solution that keeps up with growing industry, information, and customer demands can greatly improve your profitability.
Microsoft SQL Server 2005—the next generation of enterprise data management software—delivers a cost-effective, reliable data platform that significantly increases the productivity of financial services providers. Whether you're upgrading, migrating, or adopting a data management solution for the first time, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 gives you:
| • | Accurate, fast, and secure processing of high-volume transactions |
| • | A rich family of automated forecasting and analysis tools |
| • | Better customer service solutions |
| • | Greater return on investment |
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What Microsoft SQL Server 2005 does for financial data
Microsoft SQL Server helps financial organizations succeed by providing them with a more secure, highly scalable, and fully integrated system for managing and analyzing vast warehouses of enterprise data. Numerous companies have come to rely on the product's powerful online transaction processing (OLTP) and business intelligence capabilities, two functionalities that are "huge in financial services," says Mike Wons, technology strategy director for the Microsoft Worldwide Financial Services Group.
OLTP
Online transaction processing, or OLTP, is what powers the millions of real-time data transactions that make financial firms such as banks, brokerage houses, and credit-card companies tick. With Microsoft SQL Server, growing organizations get a high-performance data storage system that can keep pace with the ever-increasing amount of daily transactions their employees and customers generate.
Business intelligence
By mining the data warehouse for customer behavior such as spending habits and investment patterns, a financial firm can widely broaden its understanding of—and capability to serve—its clientele, Wons says. Microsoft SQL Server gives financial organizations a dynamic set of business intelligence tools for sophisticated data reporting and analysis that they can use to make faster, better-informed business decisions. In addition, companies can use business intelligence metrics to more efficiently and accurately forecast future customer activity—and future revenue.
How Microsoft SQL Server benefits business
Financial services companies managing their transaction and customer data in a relational database system have a lot at stake. To be of any value, data must be reliable, secure, and readily available. In addition, database processing must be quick, and data management streamlined.
As with the previous two generations of Microsoft SQL Server, Wons says, Microsoft built SQL Server 2005 with these top user requests in mind.
1. More precise yet flexible security controls
Among the product's biggest benefits are the advanced data protection features, including improvements to authorization and authentication. Also, a new fine-grained security model enables administrators to tailor security privileges so users get only the access they need to do their jobs.
2. Streamlined data management for IT staff
Administrators now can automate many more routine management processes, meaning your IT staff can grow more productive, Wons says. Rather than focusing on system maintenance and troubleshooting, administrators can spend more time creating new IT solutions.
3. Increased ability to share data with employees and customer
With support for hardware ranging from mobile devices to the data center, employees get 100-percent available, immediate access to the data they need. And if you run a 64-bit system and a public Web solution, your customers can interact with your online database far more quickly and easily.
4. Lower total cost of ownership
Faster performance, updated analytical and forecasting tools, and streamlined data management translate into less human and financial resources expended. In addition, the better your database solution performs, the more equipped you are to anticipate and address customer wants and needs.
What’s new in Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 offers a multitude of improved data management and forecasting features designed to help you put critical, timely information in the hands of your employees and customers—and ultimately improve your bottom line. The updated version also makes it much easier for developers to create more secure, robust database applications. Following are some highlights of new product features.
Powerful 64-bit computing
The best thing about SQL Server 2005 is that it removes all those barriers to scaling to the enterprise," Wons says. Supporting 64-bit computing means Microsoft SQL Server 2005 has the potential to be far more quick, available, and scalable than previous versions of the product, enabling your database solutions to grow with your organization—and its transaction volumes.
Improved business intelligence tools
A new set of business intelligence tools—including Report Builder, Analysis Services, and SQL Server Integration Services—makes its debut with Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Using these tools, Wons explains, employees throughout an organization can more efficiently mine and analyze customer and transaction data. Because the business intelligence capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 are tightly integrated with Microsoft Office, employees can create reports in a format they're most comfortable with, Wons adds. Spending less time fussing with software means your staff has more time to focus on business-critical decisions.
Enhanced developer support
"SQL Server 2005 improves developer productivity by integrating the database world with the development world," Wons says. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 now operates seamlessly with the Microsoft Visual Studio development system, making it easier for developers to build data solutions, and at a lower cost. Other developer productivity features include expanded language support, greater data access, and support for native XML and Web services, Wons says.
Upgrading from previous versions of Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 offers financial services companies substantial benefits over previous versions of Microsoft SQL Server. For more details, please see the Business Value of Upgrading to SQL Server 2005 white paper. Key benefits outlined in the white paper include:
| • | Almost effortless upgrades from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005. |
| • | Up to 35-percent faster transaction processing, including improved response times on queries. |
| • | Higher availability (99.999 percent) for mission-critical applications and five times faster failover. |
| • | Up to 40-percent faster development environment through Visual Studio and .NET integration that results in quicker project completions. |
| • | Improved analysis and calculation capabilities that enable developers to provide new services. |
| • | Improved reporting capabilities that enable business decision makers to access information when they need it and to create their own ad hoc reports in multiple formats. |
Get additional details
Learn more about how this next-generation data management solution can help your business boost its productivity. Also get technical tools and resources to help you make the move to the latest release of Microsoft SQL Server.
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