At today's TechEd keynote, Bill Veghte, a senior vice-president at Microsoft, announced that there will be a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (formerly known as the code-named "Kilimnajaro" release) in the second half of 2009. Veghte noted that this R2 release of SQL Server will focus on self-service business intelligence (BI), and new capabilities such as multi-server management and Master Data Services. Veghte highlighted the introduction in 2010 of complex event processing for real-time insight into streaming information. He observed that the ability to answer questions and pattern match over hundreds of millions of events in a day, can make a double-digit difference in ad revenue.

For full TechEd keynote coverage _see Jeff James's post.

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