Guest Blogger: Ted Kummert

Today we have a guest blogger to share what’s going on in the SQL Server world— Ted Kummert, Corporate Vice President for the Data and Storage Platform Division.

Steve, thanks for the invitation to guest blog. This is great timing because we have a lot of really exciting momentum for SQL Server that I’d love to discuss. Yesterday, at TechEd: IT Forum, we announced that SQL Server 2008 will hit another milestone this month with the November community technology preview (CTP) of the product.

The November CTP has a bunch of great stuff in it. I’m really excited to have you get a hold of this CTP and tell us what you think. Some of my favorite features in this CTP drop are FILESTREAM, which helps customers manage unstructured data such as documents and images outside the database; support for spatial technology directly in the platform which enables a broad range of location aware applications with indexing for performance; Windows Vista and Windows Server compatibility; as well as new management capabilities such as the Declarative Management Framework, a new policy-based management framework that monitors and prevents unauthorized changes to the system and can help keep companies in line with compliance guidelines.

For more information on the key features available in the November CTP, I invite you to check out the PressPress Q&A that I recently participated in which is available at https://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2007/nov07/11-12sqlserver.mspx

SQL Server 2008 is the next step on delivering our data platform vision and we’re excited about the great momentum we’ve already had with the product to date – in fact, we’ve had more than 50,000 users registered in our CTP program. It’s a busy and exciting year for us and the rest of the Application Platform team. Expect another blog entry from me as we come the closer to the global launch of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 this February.