SQL Server 2005 Update from Paul Flessner
 As senior vice president of the Server Applications at Microsoft Corp., Paul Flessner leads an integrated product team that delivers application platform products as part of the Microsoft Windows Server System, including Exchange Server, SQL Server, BizTalk Server, Content Management Server, Host Integration Server and Commerce Server. Read more about Paul on the Microsoft PressPass site. |
Today the database market changes again.
It is with great pleasure that we deliver SQL Server 2005 to you, our customers. It has been a long wait, but we trust that you will agree, it was worth it. We build SQL Server to help you change the way your company thinks and uses data. We offer SQL Server into the market providing unprecedented value for your business. We entered this market 15 years ago as the number five player in a field of four very strong competitors. Today, SQL Server is the industry leader, having sold more database units last year than IBM and Oracle combined.
SQL Server 2005 is ready to help you reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for your most demanding and critical business applications. At TechEd in June, Microsoft announced the “Chop Your TCO” contest, inviting customers to tell us about their experiences for a chance to win a customized Orange County Chopper motorcycle. We are pleased to announce that the winners are AIM Healthcare Services, who migrated a 9-terabyte system from Oracle to SQL Server, and Simon & Schuster, who saved more than U.S.$197,000 annually by migrating to SQL Server from Oracle. These are examples of how we expect SQL Server 2005 to change the economics of this market forever.
Today we change the rules by introducing the most integrated business intelligence (BI) platform in the market. No one in the industry comes close in terms of the functionality or level of integration we provide with Analysis Services, Integration Services, and Reporting Services/Report Builder.
Today we put into the market a database that enables unprecedented developer productivity and flexibility. Our integration of the common language runtime (CLR) provides the flexibility developers require, and our integration with Visual Studio 2005 provides the productivity that developers need to meet the demands of today’s fast-moving businesses. The integration between Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 has made it easier for developers to quickly build and deploy innovative solutions as illustrated through our Connected Systems 2005 Developer Competition, cosponsored with MSDN Magazine. The contest was designed to highlight and reward creativity and programming excellence using these products and we are proud to honor the 15 finalists.
This release is about quality. SQL Server 2005 has undergone 40 times more stress-testing hours than SQL Server 2000, we have upgraded more than 1,000 of your databases in our labs, and more than 1 million of you have downloaded the betas and Community Technology Previews (CTPs). More than a year ago, Microsoft deployed SQL Server 2005 internally. Today, every one of Microsoft’s core business applications runs on SQL Server 2005, including five multiterabyte systems. Our SAP system alone has processed more than 7 million invoices and 13.5 billion transactions on SQL Server 2005.
Our goal was to have 30 customers deployed on SQL Server 2005 by the time we launched. Today, we have more than 50 customers deployed on SQL Server 2005, including Barnes & Noble, Mediterranean Shipping Company, Xerox, and others in the process of migrating or upgrading their systems. These customers range in size from very small organizations, under five employees, to large enterprises running multiterabyte business-critical systems. This demonstrates the value that companies, large and small, can achieve using SQL Server 2005. We encourage you to read about some of the interesting results these companies are achieving today with SQL Server 2005 Microsoft Case Studies.
Our partners are also ready. More than 70 software partners are already supporting SQL Server 2005 today. With more than 3,000 partners trained and more than 1,500 products expected, we are confident that you will be able to find the support you need to take advantage of the value of SQL Server 2005.
To help more of you take advantage of SQL Server 2005 and its enterprise-class scalability and reliability, highly integrated developer tools, and BI functionality, we are introducing the Competitive Migration Promotion. This promotion is open to customers who want to migrate to SQL Server 2005 from costly platforms such as Oracle Enterprise and Standard editions, DB2 Enterprise and Workgroup editions, Informix, Sybase ASE, Hitachi HiRDB, and Fujitsu Synfoware. The promotional pricing includes the following:
| • | 50 percent discount on SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition license with the purchase of the regularly priced Software Assurance license |
| • | 50 percent discount on SQL Server client access licenses (CALs) with the purchase of the regularly priced Software Assurance license |
| • | 25 percent discount on SQL Server Standard Edition license with the purchase of the regularly priced Software Assurance license |
This limited-time promotion starts December 1, 2005 and runs through June 30, 2006.
We are very proud of this release and we hope you enjoy using it as much as we have in building it for you. Thanks again to everyone who downloaded the CTPs, helped test the product, and provided feedback. We couldn’t do it without you. Together we are building better software and changing the world a little bit for the better.
Paul Flessner
Senior Vice President
Microsoft Corporation
