SQL Azure Raises the Cloud Database Bar

In my last post I talked data storage options for cloud applications including SQL Azure.    SQL Azure takes the power of SQL Server to the cloud allowing you to leverage relational data as you do today.

See what is being said about SQL Azure and how it fits into the cloud in this Forrester report.   Below is the executive summary from the report.

Executive Summary”Over the past six months, Forrester interviewed 26 companies using Microsoft SQL Azure to find out
about their implementations. Most customers stated that SQL Azure delivers a reliable cloud database
platform to support various small to moderately sized applications as well as other data management
requirements such as backup, disaster recovery, testing, and collaboration. Unlike other DBMS vendors
such as IBM, Oracle, and Sybase that offer public cloud database largely using the Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) platform, Microsoft SQL Azure is unique because of its multitenant
architecture, which allows it to offer greater economies of scale and increased ease of use. Although SQL
Azure currently has a 50 GB database size limit (which might increase in the near future), a few companies
are already using data sharding with SQL Azure to scale their databases into hundreds of gigabytes.
Application developers and database administrators seeking a cloud database will find that SQL Azure
offers a reliable and cost-effective platform to build and deploy small to moderately sized applications.”