Microsoft Kicks Off Worldwide Launch of SQL Server 2008 R2

Latest release delivers enterprise-class scalability, powerful new managed self-service business intelligence capabilities, and greater IT productivity spanning the desktop, datacenter and cloud.

REDMOND, Washington, April 21, 2010 - Microsoft Corp. today announced the release to manufacturing of Microsoft
SQL Server 2008 R2, the industry's most complete information platform for
managing, accessing and delivering information. SQL Server 2008 R2 will be
available to customers in early May through Microsoft's distribution and
partner channels.

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To celebrate the release, Microsoft, in collaboration with the
Professional Association for SQL Server, will host more than 85 live launch
events worldwide. For customers and partners who cannot attend a live event,
Microsoft is offering a SQL Server 2008 R2 Digital Tour online at
www.sqlserverlaunch.com.

More than 2,000 global ISVs have indicated their plans to build solutions
based on SQL Server 2008 R2. This includes mission-critical applications for
a variety of industries, including Temenos in banking, PTC in manufacturing,
RedPrairie in retail and Convergys in telecommunications. This release will
also be supported by the widely distributed and agile solutions from SAP,
Kronos and Epicor Software Corp.

Customer reception to this release through the technology preview stages
has been one of the best in the history of the product, with more than
300,000 downloads of the community technology previews.

Key enhancements in this release include the following:

    - Managed self-service business intelligence (BI) for reporting and
      analysis
    - Enterprise-class scalability and greater IT efficiency
    - Platform integration spanning the datacenter to the cloud

Managed Self-Service Business Intelligence for Reporting and Analysis

"Customers continue to receive and create increasing amounts of data, as
information impacts their business and social lives. Our goal is to help
customers extract value and business insight from that information, whether
it is stored locally on their PC, in a datacenter or in the cloud," said Ted
Kummert, senior vice president of the Business Platform Division at
Microsoft. "Today's release of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 is a big step
forward in transforming how the IT department, the software developers, and
end users interact and gain insight from data."

With the release of SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft is introducing powerful
new managed self-service BI capabilities, bridging the gap between IT
professionals and end users by leveraging familiar tools such as Microsoft
Excel 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. With the new BI technology
named PowerPivot, end users can bring data from virtually anywhere and
manipulate large datasets with ease while still enabling IT to monitor and
manage user-generated BI solutions.

"SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel aligns well with our strategic plan of
making it easier to empower bank staff with pervasive business intelligence,"
said Ken Christie, chief financial officer, Bank of New Zealand. "Eventually
we'll promote the new SQL Server BI capabilities, including PowerPivot for
SharePoint Server 2010, to a much wider audience. The BI capabilities of SQL
Server 2008 R2 are a big step forward, and we know that many departments can
benefit from the insights gained by using the PowerPivot tools."

Enterprise-Class Scalability and Greater IT Efficiency

With this release Microsoft continues to focus on critical datacenter
needs, enabling businesses to create a highly available infrastructure that
is more secure and easier to manage. Recent benchmarks
(www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/benchmarks.aspx )show that SQL
Server 2008 R2 has raised the bar in performance on industry-standard
hardware. With the introduction of SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter edition, in
combination with Windows Server 2008 R2, customers can now run databases on
systems with up to 256 logical processors, and move to a virtualized
datacenter with Hyper-V and Live Migration support. These two releases will
help customers move to a private cloud infrastructure that is highly
available, consolidated and virtualized and that scales on demand.

Many customers look to Microsoft to provide technology for their most
mission-critical applications.

"At PREMIER Bankcard, corporate data is one of our largest assets, so our
database system priorities are performance, data quality, data security and
high availability," said Ron Van Zanten, directing officer of Business
Intelligence at PREMIER Bankcard LLC. "We have over 100 SQL Server
installations, including a data warehouse and OLTP and imaging systems, with
a total of around 40 terabytes of managed data. These are mission-critical
systems that require 24×7 availability and performance that is measured in
milliseconds. The enhanced database mirroring in SQL Server 2008 R2 helps
protect our data against corruption or in the event of a hardware failure.
Additionally, SQL Server 2008 R2 application and multiserver management will
be our path to improved productivity without needing to add DBAs, with easy
setup and policy-based evaluation of our servers that help us deliver the
optimum performance and availability we need."

Additional key enhancements in this release include two new components of
Microsoft's information platform: SQL Server 2008 R2 Master Data Services,
which helps customers drive better data consistency across heterogeneous
systems, and SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight, which supports high-scale
complex event-stream processing.

With the upcoming availability of SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data
Warehouse, customers will be able to scale-out their data warehouses from
tens to hundreds of terabytes. SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse
will be offered as an appliance in several configurations through select
hardware providers.

Platform Integration Spanning the Datacenter to the Cloud

SQL Server 2008 R2 also represents a further commitment from Microsoft to
the cloud. The power of SQL Server is extending to the cloud through
Microsoft SQL Azure (www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/sqlazure/ ), which
provides a consistent programming model, common capabilities and tools while
offering new business opportunities, high availability, self-management and
massive scale through distributed cloud data services. Microsoft's recent
preview release of the service code-named "Dallas" enables customers to have
access to rich new datasets from companies such as Pitney Bowes Inc., NASA
and the Associated Press Online. With the capabilities in PowerPivot for
Excel, combining private and public datasets for deeper analysis and business
insight is much easier. SQL Server 2008 R2 delivers a complete approach to
managing, accessing and delivering information across the organization.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in
software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize
their full potential.

Alyssa Trenkamp, +1-206-372-0814, alyssat at waggeneredstrom.com, or Rapid Response Team, +1-503-443-7070, rrt at waggeneredstrom.com, both ofWaggener Edstrom Worldwide for Microsoft Corp.; NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft's Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed atwww.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.