It will be nine to 12 months before we really see uptake,' Harrison said. 'In the SMB space, adoption is driven more by compatibility of applications than by desire from the client. Nevertheless, widespread adoption could still be a year away as customers wait for ISVs to build in support for the new platform, solution providers said. 'Most of the features are really to get them on par with Oracle and and#91 IBMand#93 DB2,' said Marc Harrison, president of Silicon East, a Microsoft partner in Manalapan, N.J. Solution providers said many customers are eagerly awaiting the launch of SQL Server 2008, which is seen as another step toward reaching parity with its competitors. 'More and more customers are asking for fully integrated solutions, not just a database, so the ability to integrate tightly with the rest of the stack is very important.' It's very important to the work we're doing,' said Alan Day, vice president of NWN, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Waltham, Mass.

'We're looking at the whole issue of business performance management as being increasingly critical, so as far as being easier to use, and more powerful integration into the tool set. New capabilities include support for policy-based management, auditing, large-scale data warehousing, geospatial data and advanced reporting and analysis services, the company said.

With SQL Server 2008, Microsoft is adding a number of features to improve scalability. Customers now can download a fully-functional trial version for evaluation, and Microsoft is also making the software available to the Microsoft Developer Network and TechNet subscribers.

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