In that brief moment after the latest version of SQL Server has shipped and before the next public release cycle begins, SQL Server pros have a perfect opportunity to assess what they want out of the current release and what they’re looking for in the future. As always, SQL Server Magazine is here to help. SQL Server Magazine’s Michael Otey, senior technical director, and Sheila Molnar, executive editor, joined Ted Kummert, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Business Platform Division, for an exclusive interview about SQL Server 2008 R2 and the future of Microsoft’s data platform. Ted is responsible for setting the strategy for SQL Server, cloud services, data programmability, and modeling technologies. We spoke with him in mid-summer, before the fall product announcements. For an update, watch for the web-exclusive sidebar “Ted Kummert Comments on SQL Server Product Announcements."
SQL Server Magazine: What do you see as Microsoft’s competitive edge in the relational database market?
Kummert: We talk about building SQL Server in terms of the Information Platform Vision, which encircles how we think about what we build. We talk about a comprehensive set of capabilities that forms the foundation of the mission-critical platform. We talk about each of the communities we serve in terms of the IT pros, the developers, and every end user who wants business insights. I look at our overall approach: We’re delivering the SQL Server platform to the desktop, in the data center, in the cloud. We have a very intensive and broad scope. We can start with a departmental workload and scale mission-critical workloads to the highest levels of scale. And we bring all of those capabilities together in one product. We think this kind of comprehensive and complete approach is unique in the market.
Now I’ll talk about our philosophy in terms of how we bring it to market. We feel very good about our hardware ecosystem and our partners. They’re a big part of the overall equation being able to bring these solutions to market built on industry-standard server platforms with a lot of choice for customers. And, given how we approach and price our product and how we work with our hardware ecosystem, we think it’s a great value for our customers in terms of solution costs and total cost of ownership (TCO). And certainly in today’s economy TCO really does matter to our customers.
SQL Server Magazine: How critical is business intelligence (BI) to the future of SQL Server?
Kummert: For our customers, BI continues to be a high priority in terms of investment. The current pressures on our customers to do more with less and show more business value are raising the relative priority of investments in BI solutions. BI is fundamentally about end users who need to get questions answered. Out there in the world of data is the answer to the question that’s going to help them move forward and help the business move more efficiently. BI is about empowering end users with tools and capabilities. SQL Server 2008 R2 and Office 2010 managed self-service BI are revolutionary in terms of empowering end users to solve problems on their own. IT still gets to do the strategic stuff. We think that’s going to be a great thing for our customers.