Journey to a Modern Data Culture with Microsoft’s SQL Server 2016

 Malaysia and the data industry is in the midst of a revolution – in which businesses are transforming themselves and entire industries are being reinvented in ways we never could have imagined. Central to this revolution are three major trends – cloud computing, big data and analytics and intelligence.

The convergence of all three trends is where the magic happens, reshaping the way organizations, sectors and governments are engaging with customers and how they run their business processes and transform their products. This is the state of the industry, where data is the new electricity driving institutions forward, empowering them to achieve more within a mobile-first, cloud-first world.

Malaysia a part of this revolution – placing great emphasis on data science

Amidst this revolution, Malaysia understands the importance of big data, and is cultivating and building up data science as a key component within the country. As the nation looks to achieve the status of being a developed nation by the year 2020, more and more organizations, sectors and industries are leveraging 21^st century technology and expertise to drive the country forward in their respective fields. The Malaysian government has seen this demand, and have too placed similar importance to developing data science, with its agency, Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), leading the charge to increase the number of data scientists in the country from a mere 80 to 1,500 by the year 2020.

Ir Dr Karl Ng, Director, Innovation Capital Division, MDeC elaborates, “Data scientists are experts in analyzing data to come up with business insights and they are very much in demand right now. We are committed to finding the right talent for this field – to build a vibrant and dynamic Big Data Analytics industry locally. With close collaboration with the ecosystem partners, we are confident that we are able to meet our target by 2020 of 1,500 data scientists, MDeC believes that having the right tools and technology platform are equally important to enable data professionals to be more productive and innovative.”

Microsoft supports industry’s demands and trends, through launch of SQL Server 2016

Microsoft’s vision of empowering every person and organization to achieve more is central in support of the industry’s demands to build up data science. Today, Microsoft Malaysia launched SQL Server 2016, the next release of the company’s flagship business analytics and data management platform.

Microsoft’s SQL Server 2016 is built to power the transformation of this revolution, with technology and capabilities borne from the disruptions happening in cloud, data and intelligence. True to this revolution, SQL Server 2016 comes with R – the most popular language with data scientists – built-in to help them solve the most challenging problems in fields ranging from computational biology to quantitative marketing. This comes on the heels of Gartner recognizing Microsoft as an industry leader within Operational Database Management Systems and also the fields of analytics platform and business intelligence.

Michal Golebiewski, Chief Marketing and Operations Officer of Microsoft Malaysia explains, “Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report is testament to the demands brought forth by the revolution within the industry. Organizations and sectors alike want more insights to transform their businesses and services. Microsoft recognizes this shift and have integrated SQL Server 2016 with the tools and resources required to be ahead of today’s revolution curve. We believe that SQL Server 2016 is the biggest leap forward in Microsoft’s data platform history with real-time operational analytics, rich visualizations on mobile devices, built-in advanced analytics, new advanced security technology, and new hybrid cloud scenarios.”

Key Features of SQL Server 2016

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 was built to help businesses rethink their data strategies with today’s challenges. It supports hybrid transactional/analytical processing, advanced analytics and machine learning, mobile BI, data integration, always encrypted query processing capabilities and in-memory transactions with persistence.

Key Features include:

• Stretch Database technology is an industry first and allows customers to dynamically stretch warm and cold transactional data to Azure so operational data is always accessible. This also enables customers to have a cost-effective data strategy while protecting their customer’s sensitive data.
• Advanced analytics using our new R support that enables customers to do real-time predictive analytics on both operational and analytic data.
• Ground-breaking security encryption capabilities that enable data to always be encrypted at rest, in motion and in-memory to deliver maximum security protection.
• In-memory database support for every workload with performance increases up to 30-100x.
• Business Intelligence for every employee on every device – including new mobile BI support for iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices.
• Available on Linux in private preview, making SQL Server 2016 more accessible to a broader set of users
• Unique cloud capabilities that enable customers to deploy hybrid architectures that partition data workloads across on-premises and cloud based systems to save costs and increase agility

Reaping the benefits of SQL Server 2016

One such organization that has been taking advantage of SQL Server 2016 is MasterCard. The company wanted to design applications to help understand the returns from its customer programs and predict the actual broad impact of those programs over time. In order to do so, they needed to analyze volumes of disparate data, something that took both time and resources. By using SQL Server 2016 and its powerful analytical languages such as R, MasterCard was able to efficiently build the largest analytic model it has ever created – being five times bigger than the previous model – but completed in only less than one tenth the time.

“MasterCard is a prime example of an institution that was able to leverage and transform one’s disposition to take advantage of today’s industry trends, despite the disruptive nature of such a revolution. With SQL Server 2016, MasterCard was able to abstract tangible insights that it then used to empower its organization forward, with more meaningful products in a more efficient manner. This is exactly what Microsoft’s products and services (such as SQL Server 2016) were made for – to empower every person and organization to achieve more in this increasingly cloud-first, mobile-first world,” Golebiewski added.

SQL Server 2016 Express is offered as a free download, with the Standard version starting at USD3,717 and the Enterprise version at USD14,256.

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 About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more.