REDMOND, Washington, February 23 /PRNewswire/ --

- New reference architectures from Bull, Dell and HP make it faster, 
easier and more affordable for companies to deploy enterprise-class data
warehousing projects.

Microsoft Corp today announced SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse, a
new set of reference architectures for data warehousing that will help
eliminate many of the barriers companies traditionally face while creating
data warehouses. For as little as US$13,000 per terabyte, SQL Server Fast
Track Data Warehouse gives customers immediate access to pretested,
preconfigured industry-standard hardware from partners Bull, Dell and HP that
increases Microsoft SQL Server 2008 scalability up to 32 terabytes, and helps
reduce the time and effort necessary to deploy mission-critical projects. In
addition, Microsoft is partnering with systems integrators Avanade, Cognizant
Technology Solutions, HP and Hitachi Consulting Corp to provide solution
templates specially tailored for the new reference architectures.

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"In this difficult economic climate, organisations relying on their data
to inform critical business decisions need an enterprise data platform that
provides access to huge volumes of data at a low cost," said Stuart Frost,
general manager, SQL Server Data Warehousing at Microsoft. "With SQL Server
Fast Track Data Warehouse, we are offering customers choices in reference
configurations and technical guidance to create a customised, highly scalable
enterprise-class data warehouse solution that fits their needs and their
budget."

Unlike some data warehouse appliances available today, Microsoft's unique
delivery model allows customers more flexibility and choice by letting them
select industry-standard hardware that conforms to their existing
infrastructure environments. The new configurations use symmetric
multiprocessing architectures to build enterprise data warehouses on a
standard platform, providing better capacity, price and same or better
performance as comparable systems right out of the box.

According to HP, "For organisations to be competitive in today's global
marketplace, they need affordable, easy-to-deploy technology solutions that
are powerful and secure," said Mike Gill, vice president, Industry Standard
Servers, HP. "Industry-leading HP ProLiant servers running the Microsoft SQL
Server 2008 Fast Track Data Warehouse bring the benefits of data warehousing
to a broader customer base than ever before."

Avanade, Cognizant, HP and Hitachi Consulting are also offering solution
templates and technical guidance to help customers create customised
architectures for their industry-specific data warehouse needs. With a choice
of hardware configurations, customers can apply industry best practices to
help achieve much higher scalability and performance, thereby reducing the
total cost of ownership for an enterprise-class data warehouse.

Enterprise-Class Data Warehousing for Less

Through balanced configurations, the new reference architectures are
designed to optimise all hardware components, delivering up to 200 MB per
second per central processing unit core. SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse
is designed to deliver increased performance and linear scalability out of
the box with minimal tuning required, thereby saving IT departments more time
and money.

"We are happy to provide our reference architectures, solution templates
and technical best practices to SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse. Our
customers can now benefit from increased data warehouse performance with SQL
Server 2008," said Bruno Pinna, corporate marketing director of Bull. "With
our expertise, companies can be more reactive to continuous business changes
and deploy new business analytics applications in a much faster and safer
way."

SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse is the next milestone for customers
following Microsoft's road map for enterprise business intelligence and data
warehousing. By upgrading today to the new reference architectures with SQL
Server 2008, SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse offers a seamless
transition to customers planning to make the leap to the massive scalability
and powerful business intelligence capabilities of a project code-named
"Madison." "Madison" will integrate SQL Server 2008 with the massively
parallel processing technologies acquired with DATAllegro Inc to enable
companies to configure data warehouses into the hundreds of terabytes.

"With Microsoft SQL Server 2008 running on Dell PowerEdge servers, these
new data warehousing solutions are able to scale from several terabytes to
multi-tens of terabytes," said Judy Chavis, director of Software Marketing
and Business Development at Dell. "Soon, they'll be able to scale even
higher. This industry-standard solution gives customers a cost-effective
alternative to other proprietary business intelligence solutions available
today."

Providing a Powerful End-to-End Data Platform

Since the launch of SQL Server 2008 in August 2008, there has been
overwhelming customer and partner excitement for the integrated data
management and business intelligence data platform it provides. With over 1.5
million downloads of SQL Server 2008 to date and more than 2,500 partners
already providing solutions on the platform, SQL Server 2008 is now the
fastest-growing relational database in the world, according to some industry
analysts.

SQL Server 2008 has also received recognition as a critical component in
Microsoft's acclaimed business intelligence platform. Gartner Inc recently
positioned Microsoft as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for BI Platforms,
2008,(1) and in the Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management
Systems, 2008.(2)

Microsoft was also recently positioned as a Leader in "The Forrester
Wave: Enterprise Data Warehousing Platforms, Q1 2009" (Forrester Research
Inc, February 2009). In this report, Forrester notes that "expanded
scalability, flexibility, and affordability are the dominant requirements in
today's budget-stressed enterprise data warehouse (EDW) platforms market."

According to Microsoft, with SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse
customers can combine all three with easy deployment and the robust business
intelligence capabilities in SQL Server 2008 to implement an enterprise-class
data warehouse.

About the Magic Quadrant

The Gartner Magic Quadrants are copyrighted 2008 and 2009 by Gartner Inc,
and are reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical
representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts
Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that
marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor,
product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise
technology users to select only those vendors placed in the Leaders quadrant.
The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to
be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or
implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of
merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Pricing and Availability

SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse hardware and reference architectures
are available from Bull, Dell and HP starting at US$13,000 per terabyte. More
information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/fasttrack or at
http://bull.com, http://dell.com, http://hp.com. More information about
purchasing a SQL Server 2008 licence is available at
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/how-to-buy.aspx.

About Microsoft

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

About Microsoft EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa)

Microsoft has operated in EMEA since 1982. In the region Microsoft
employs more than 16,000 people in over 64 subsidiaries, delivering products
and services in more than 139 countries and territories.

This material is for informational purposes only. Microsoft Corp
disclaims all warranties and conditions with regard to use of the material
for other purposes. Microsoft Corp shall not, at any time, be liable for any
special, direct, indirect or consequential damages, whether in an action of
contract, negligence or other action arising out of or in connection with the
use or performance of the material. Nothing herein should be construed as
constituting any kind of warranty.

(1) Gartner Inc, "Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms,
        2008," by James Richardson, Kurt Schlegel, Rita L. Sallam and Bill 
        Hostmann, Jan. 16, 2009

    (2) Gartner Inc, "Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management
        Systems, 2008," by Donald Feinberg and Mark Beyer, Dec. 23, 2008