Business owners may want to take note of the fact that Microsoft recently announced an upgraded version of its flagship database, its SQL Server. SQL Server 2012, which was formerly given the name Denali during development, offers a number of new business intelligence features and capabilities, according to experts, and will be available in three editions.
Enterprise, Business Intelligence and Standard, all offer business owners a range of options. For example, experts say that Microsoft designed the Enterprise edition to work best for large-scale data warehousing, while the Business Intelligence edition – a wholly new offering – is geared toward companies that want to increase their efficiency in this realm.
However, business owners may be more concerned about the price of keeping their business systems current, as many know the advantages that arming their employees with the latest IT software is key to fostering growth.
"Overall, I'd say they [the prices] stayed the same or went down, with the reservation that the change from per proc to per core is significant, but may not have a huge impact on a lot of customers, since quad-core procs are probably a common choice for running high-end editions of SQL Server," Paul DeGroot, a Microsoft software licensing expert, told Visual Studio Magazine in an e-mail.
Still, business owners who are just looking to integrate this type of technology into their company operations may want to secure training before making their purchase. In addition to Microsoft training, other SQL certifications could be useful. For example, independent companies offer Oracle SQL certification that could help business owners and their employees better make use of their new investment.