ABU DHABI: Microsoft Gulf has launched its SQL Server 2016, the latest version of the company’s flagship database and analytics platform, in the UAE. SQL Server 2016 can deliver a consistent experience in both on-premise and cloud deployments, with common development and management tools – providing an exceptional, value-added data experience, no matter where customers choose to implement it.
SQL Server 2016 supports hybrid transactional and analytical processing; advanced analytics and machine learning; mobile business intelligence; data integration; always-encrypted query processing; and in-memory transactions with persistence. It is also possibly the world’s only relational database management system (RDMS) to be born in the cloud – tested on Microsoft’s Azure platform, across 22 global data centres, handling billions of requests per day.
Microsoft stands ready to help new customers in their migration to SQL Server 2016, providing training to DBAs, including hands-on labs and instructor-led demos, and lessons on how to manage the deployment process, both on premises or in the cloud, a statement said.
SQL Server 2016’s real-time in-memory processing capabilities are industry-leading, allowing up to 100-times faster analytics with updatable in-memory column-stores. It is also the only commercial database that leads in both transaction processing (as per the TPC-E benchmark, which simulates the OLTP workloads of brokerage companies) and data warehousing (as per the TPC-H benchmark). This means customers can get real-time insights when querying massive data sets. New Stretch Database technology allows DBAs to use Azure for almost limitless scalability, and AlwaysOn Availability Groups enable low-cost disaster recovery.
“It is no exaggeration to say data is the very lifeblood of the modern business,” said Necip Ozyucel, Cloud and Enterprise Business Group Lead Microsoft Gulf. “It can inform and inspire; it can bring insights that help companies outmanoeuvre competitors; it has the potential to disrupt entire industries. Microsoft has long been a leader in the data platform and analytics space.
“Some DBAs using SQL Server products today weren’t even born in 1989, when we released the first version. That’s a tradition we take very seriously, and so with SQL Server 2016, Microsoft is transforming the database – with the first of its kind to be born in the cloud and deliver enterprise-class functionality, performance and scale. Having been rigorously tested on Azure, it is battle-hardened and customer-ready,” Ozyucel added.
