The SQL Server Team is pleased to announce the release of the November Community Technology Preview (CTP) of SQL Server 2008 R2!  This is our second public CTP of SQL Server 2008 R2 for community download and evaluation, following up from our prior CTP release in August. 

The November CTP is “feature complete”, including the remaining SQL Server 2008 R2 features including Master Data Services and Self Service Business Intelligence capabilities delivered in SQL Server Reporting Services and Project “Gemini”:

· Master Data Services – helps enterprises standardize the data people rely on to make critical business decisions. With SQL Server Master Data Services, IT organizations can centrally manage critical data assets companywide and across diverse systems, enable more people to securely manage master data directly, and ensure the integrity of information over time.

· SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint (formerly known as Project “Gemini”) – Provides IT departments the ability to host, monitor, manage user generated BI solutions through Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

· SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel (formerly known as Project “Gemini”) – is a data analysis tool that delivers unmatched computational power directly within the application users already know and love—Microsoft Excel. Leveraging familiar Excel features, users can transform enormous quantities of data from virtually any source with incredible speed into meaningful information to get the answers they need in seconds. Combined with SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint, users can securely share their finding with others and work seamlessly in the browser with the same performance and features as the Excel client

Features released in August CTP include:

· Application and Multi-server Management -  help organizations manage database environments efficiently at scale with increased visibility and control across the application lifecycle

· SMP scale up with support for up to 256 logical processors

· Report Builder 3.0 with support for geospatial visualization

· Microsoft SQL Server StreamInsight -  Microsoft’s new complex event processing technology to help businesses derive better insights by correlating event streams from multiple sources with near-zero latency

We encourage you to download and evaluate the software in test environments today. The November CTP is feature complete, giving customers and partners access to the full capabilities of R2. Therefore, we do not plan any additional CTPs for this release. SQL Server 2008 R2 is still on track to ship in the first half of calendar year 2010.

Take these actions today:

· Download the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 November Community Technology Preview Now.

· Connect with the SQL Server 2008 R2 Development Team.

· Provide feedback on the November CTP.

Please contact me if you need have any further questions.

Your Data, Any Place, Any Time

SQL Server 2008 R2 continues to deliver on Microsoft’s information platform vision to provide customers with a complete solution that helps manage their information assets, develop rich business applications and drive business impact through providing insight out to all users. SQL Server 2008 R2 is our next-generation database release that is designed to deliver:

• Managed, self-service business intelligence. Expanding powerful BI tools to all users with SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel and empowering a new class of business users to build and share powerful BI solutions with little or no IT support, while still enabling IT to monitor and manage user-generated BI solutions.

• Greater IT and Developer efficiency. Enabling administrators to centrally monitor and manage multiple database applications, instances or servers, accelerating the development and deployment of applications and providing improved support for virtualization through Hyper-V with Live Migration in Windows Server 2008 R2.

• A trusted, and scalable platform. Supporting data consistency across heterogeneous systems through SQL Server Master Data Services, enabling high-scale complex event-stream processing through SQL Server StreamInsight, and supporting scale-up scenarios for the largest available x64 and Itanium hardware (up to 256 logical processors).

• New Editions of SQL Server for High-End, Mission-Critical Scenarios. Microsoft is introducing two new offerings for high-scale, mission-critical applications. SQL Server R2 Datacenter delivers a high-performing information platform that provides high levels of scalability for large application workloads and managing an organization’s database infrastructure. With support for up to 256 logical processors and unlimited virtualization, SQL Server Datacenter and Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter provide a foundation on which to build enterprise-class solutions. SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse (formerly named “Project Codenamed Madison”) extends Microsoft’s customer solutions for data warehousing by providing scalability and performance from tens to hundreds of terabytes at a low total cost of ownership. SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse will be available on industry-standard hardware from Bull, Dell, HP, EMC and IBM.