Paul Flessner, Sr. VP, Server Applications, gave his keynote entitled “Getting Ready for Connected Systems” at Tech·Ed 2005 in Orlando, FL today. Embodied in the keynote were a number of new product announcements and a handful of powerful and entertaining demos.

The huge announcement of the day was that SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, and BizTalk Server 2006 will launch the week of November 7. Now the world can stop speculating that these products will slip into 2006 – Microsoft has officially committed to dates.

"The BizTalk Server 2006 announcement is a surprise. I knew that the product team had its act together, but I had no idea they could pull off this date."

The BizTalk Server 2006 announcement is a surprise. I knew that the product team had its act together, but I had no idea they could pull off this date. Flessner explained that from an integrated experience perspective this is an important addition to the launch of these products – that many customers already benefit from the integrated development environment of BizTalk Server built on Visual Studio to quickly integrate and automate business processes that span applications, systems, and trading partners. Microsoft will ship an integrated product suite in Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and BizTalk Server 2006 this November and hopes to change the way the world thinks about and uses application infrastructure with their connected systems.

Another big milestone in the keynote was the announcement of RFID Infrastructure from Microsoft. The code name for the project is “Qubani” – it is the effort to build a robust and intelligent infrastructure that will facilitate businesses to take advantage of RFID technologies easily and at a low cost.

Also announced were new TPC performance benchmarks (TPC-C and TPC-H) for SQL Server 2005 (Yukon). These new performance and scalability benchmarks show SQL Server 2005 at a 107% performance advantage over Oracle at 37% lower cost in the TPC-C benchmark, and 138% performance advantage over Oracle at 20% lower cost in the TPC-H benchmark. We haven’t seen public TPC benchmarks on Microsoft and Oracle in a long time. Seemingly, these benchmarks show Microsoft as having a large advantage in performance and cost over Oracle in the database market.

Also announced was that SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (SRS) would be available in all editions of the product. This is good news. SRS is a powerful product in the currently shipping SQL Server product and is a “must-have” in SQL Server 2005 because of a number of new features and its ease of use. It would be a shame to have to license it separately or have it only be available in the enterprise version of SQL Server 2005; Microsoft announced today that the world will not have that problem.

"Every Tech·Ed attendee was given a voucher for a real, licensed copy of SQL Server Standard Edition absolutely free"

Every Tech·Ed attendee was given a voucher for a real, licensed copy of SQL Server Standard Edition absolutely free, redeemable when the product ships later in the fall. Since Microsoft is a company that makes significant revenue on the licensing of its products, I can only assume in this case that the company is convinced SQL Server 2005 is so good that the 12,000 attendees who get the standard edition of SQL Server for free will be so enamored with that product that they will want “bigger and more” of it after using it and be willing to pay for it – a very interesting broad adoption story from Microsoft, for sure.

Flessner showed some interesting statistics from the Gartner Group in the database market. First, that Microsoft is significantly behind in the total database revenue numbers at 20% with IBM coming in at 34.1% and Oracle coming in at 33.7%. Then Flessner showed IDC’s database adoption numbers in terms of unit share. In the overall database market Microsoft has a commanding lead with 407 million units shipped as compared to IBM at 72 million and Oracle at 245 million. That staggering lead by Microsoft in overall numbers is not much of a surprise to me. What was most surprising were IDC’s enterprise database market numbers: Microsoft leads with 175 million units shipped. They are trailed by Oracle at 148 million and IBM at 47 million. A few years ago one could have never predicted such a huge overtaking by Microsoft when Oracle clearly dominated the market.

It made sense that after Flessner showed those impressive competitive database statistics he made the official product announcement of the “SQL Server Migration Kit.” The migration kit automates Oracle to SQL Server migrations, claiming to reduce the manual effort of an Oracle-to-SQL migration by over 80%. It is a free download available today at: www.microsoft.com/sql/migration. Flessner also announced the “Cost Chopper Contest” offering a free Orange County Chopper to the person or company with the most compelling Oracle-to-SQL migration.

All in all Flessner’s keynote was filled with good demos and a number of significant product announcements – an exciting day for Microsoft.