Microsoft brings next generation data management to the Gulf with launch of Microsoft SQL Server 2005

At the launch event at the JW Marriott Hotel, developers, IT professionals and business decision makers learnt how Microsoft SQL Server 2005 can help them to better connect people, business processes and information, and make better decisions more quickly.

"Microsoft customers' demands are changing and there is an opportunity for us to deliver a platform that will better enable people to add more value, gain greater insight and play an even bigger role in the success of their organizations," said Charbel Fakhoury, General Manager, Microsoft Gulf. "Through a deeply collaborative development process with our customers and partners, today's launch delivers a set of new platform capabilities that offer an unprecedented level of integration between the server infrastructure and development tools and ultimately give people software to help impact business results in a more tangible way".

The advancements Microsoft is delivering today with SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, and BizTalk Server 2006 provide developers and IT professionals with a dependable application platform with underlying support for Web services and service orientation capabilities.

Furthering Microsoft's move to more role-specific software, today's event highlighted the expanded set of product offerings designed to meet the unique requirements of audiences that span from hobbyists and students, through professional developers and IT Professionals, to enterprise architects and development teams.

Microsoft highlighted the deep integration of Visual Studio Team System with SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006, and showed how together these products help break down the barriers between the architect, tester, developer and project manager to enable better collaboration across distributed environments and speed business-driven software delivery.

"We are offering a range of services that expand on these products and will enable our customers to connect the information across their business so their people can gain deeper insights, and obtain faster results," said Fakhoury.

Microsoft also announced several new benchmark results that demonstrate the performance gains that can be made using SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005. The validation from these benchmarks enables customers to better understand the real world scenarios that are supported by these products.