Microsoft’s new SQL Server 2016 release heralds a new age for data analytics

Since time immemorial, man has always sought to categorise and derive meaning from data. From the earliest efforts with teams of scribes painstakingly recording a kingdom’s harvest to today’s football sized server farms that record millions of financial transactions that occur every minute, one thing is clear – there’s more data than ever and it is becoming even more of a challenge to make sense of it.

Back in the days when people thought that the concept of a round earth was quaint, if not downright barmy, conventional record keeping methods were sufficient to manage the affairs of a kingdom. Globalisation and a rapidly expanding cloud-based digital economy have created reams of data that an entire castle worth of scribes can’t interpret, much less a skyscraper full of accountants. Data has become not only a commodity in its raw form but a currency too and, quaintly enough for the diviners of yore who once sought to read the future through tea leaves and cloud formations, a means for extrapolating and charting the course of not just a business but entire national economies. To handle that much data requires a revolution in how data is stored, managed and analysed which is where Microsoft is taking a long term view of how the world will be in the years to come. In an intimate media briefing, Microsoft got together some of their foremost minds to share their vision of a future driven by the fuel of the future – big data – as well as the means to interpret and harness it effectively.

To make sense of big data requires an entirely new field of study and a vocation specifically trained to interpret it. Enter data science and the techno-savants who can make sense, interpret and derive meaning from this data – the data scientists. According to Dr Karl Ng, Innovation Capital Division of the Multimedia Development Corporation (MdeC) of Malaysia, “Data scientists are experts in analysing data to compe up with business insights and they are very much in demand right now. We are committed to finding the right talent for this field – to build a vibrant and dynamic Big Data Analytics industry locally. With close collaboration with our ecosystem partners, we are confident that we are able to meet our target by the year 2020 of 1,500 data scientists.” He added ,”MDeC believes that having the right tools and technology platform are equally important to enable data professionals to be more productive and innovative.”

Dr. Karl Ng, Director, Innovation Capital Division of the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) of Malaysia

To meet the need for the right tools, Microsoft Malaysia launched SQL Server 2016, the next-gen incarnation of their business analytics and business management platform. Integrating R, the language of choice for data scientists, SQL Server 2016 has been designed to meet the challenges of the future by being able to take on the most challenging problems facing humanity from computational biology to quantitative marketing.

To achieve that, Microsoft’s SQL Server 2016 supports hybrid transactional/analytical processing, advanced analytics and machine learning, mobile business intelligence, data integration, always encrypted query processing capabilities and in-memory transactions with persistence.

SQL Server 2016 also integrates Stretch Database technology, an industry first that allows users to both protect their data while maintaining a cost-effective data strategy while ensuring operational data is always accessible. The use of R also allows for adopters of SQL Server 2016 to perform real-time predictive analytics on both operational and analytic data. Of particular note is that SQL Server 2016 is also available on Linux and offers unique cloud capabilities, allowing customers to save costs and increase organisational agility.

Recognising Microsoft’s extensive experience in the field, Gartner has lauded Microsoft’s leadership in the fields of analytics, business intelligence and in Operational Database Management Systems. “Organisations and sectors alike want more insights to transform their businesses and services. Microsoft recognizes this shift and have integrated SQL Server 2016 with the tools and resources required to be ahead of today’s revolution curve. We believe that SQL Server 2016 is the biggest leap forward in Microsoft’s data platform history with real-time operational analytics, rich visualizations on mobile devices, built-in advanced analytics, new advanced security technology, and new hybrid cloud scenarios,” said Michal Golebiewski, Chief Marketing and Operations Officer of Microsoft Malaysia. For a limited time only until June 2016, Microsoft is offering free licenses for Microsoft SQL Server 2016 for those who intend to migrate from Oracle. On its own, the standard version of SQL Server 2016 retails for USD3,717 while the Enterprise version retails for USD14,256. For more about Microsoft swing by their official site news site here.

Michal Golebiewski, Chief Marketing and Operations Officer of Microsoft Malaysia