Should you upgrade to SQL Server 2016? Yes. Today. Now!
SQL Server 2016 became generally available starting June 1st, 2016. And you should be upgrading to SQL Server 2016 now, if you haven’t already. SQL Server 2016, obviously provides tons of value to your applications and IT solutions, but if you are uncertain if you should wait a bit longer, then read on.
There are many customers already running SQL Server 2016 in production. Can you guess when the first customer deployed SQL Server 2016 in production? June 2015. Yes, that is not a typo and you read it correctly. The first customer adopted SQL Server 2016 in production a couple days after we released CTP2 (the first production-ready build for SQL Server 2016). Exactly a year back. One year before GA. And, since then, many customers have taken advantage of the great value in SQL Server 2016 and deployed in production. Many of these applications serve core mission-critical business operations for the customers.
Cloud-born and battle-hardened. Azure SQL DB, the SQL Server database service in the cloud, is also an early adopter of SQL Server 2016. 1.7 million Azure SQL DB databases running thousands of varieties of applications of various shapes and sizes have been running SQL Server 2016 for months. The experience of managing millions of databases has helped harden SQL Server 2016.
If you are not running on SQL Server 2016, you are missing out on some really cool features that can not only help improve your business operations, but can help improve the life as database professionals as well. I will discuss some of my favorite features in the “Sweet 16” blog series starting next week. You can also read the SQL Server technical documentation here.
When are you upgrading to SQL Server 2016? What are you waiting for?