The company officially announced that SQL Server 2016 on wide release starting June 1, 2016, with all versions of the product available from day one.
In an announcement that is not particularly surprising, Microsoft announced that it will be making SQL Server 2016 generally available on June 1, 2016.
That is the date when SQL Server 2016 will leave preview mode and will become available to anybody who wants it, with all four versions of the product launching on the same day.
Back in March, Microsoft rolled out the first release candidate for the service and since then has launched a further 3 RC's.
SQL Server 2016 will be available in Enterprise, Standard, Express, and Developer editions and open to existing and new customers, Microsoft said in its official announcement.
Microsoft has previously described SQL Server 2016 as “very rich” in terms of features and has touted the service as boasting enhanced security, improved visualizations, and real-time operational analytics. This will be a product that the company sells licensed by the core and not per processor, stating that the service is perfect for:
“Mission critical intelligent applications delivering real-time operational intelligence by combining built – in advanced analytics and in-memory technology without having to move the data or impact end user performance.
Enterprise scale data warehousing with enhanced in-memory columnstore that increases query performance by over 100x vs disk based solutions. With SQL Server 2016, you can also access optimized MPP scale out software that can be combined with scale out appliance architecture with our Analytics Platform System (APS).
Applications requiring the highest levels of security with new Always Encrypted technology that protects your data at rest and in motion without impacting database performance.
Comprehensive business intelligence solutions on mobile devices with an end-to-end mobile BI solution built-in that can deliver insights on any device. You can also manage all of your KPIs, mobile reports and traditional reports from a modern web portal.
New big data solutions that require combining relational data with non-relational data with PolyBase technology built-in that allows you to query structured and unstructured data with the simplicity of T-SQL.
Hybrid cloud solutions that can reduce storage costs, improve high availability and simplify IT operations with new Stretch Database technology. This keeps more of your historical data at your fingertips by transparently and securely stretching warm and cold OLTP data to Microsoft Azure on-demand without application changes. In addition, faster replicas can be placed in Azure to give you cost effective disaster recovery and backups.”
Microsoft says in its official release that SQL Server 2016 holds two new TPC-E world record price/performance benchmarks, while the service is the best benchmarked amongst “key industry applications”.
Recently the company has stopped support for SQL Server 2005 and urged users to upgrade to newer versions, while Microsoft won plenty of praise for announcing SQL Server for the open source Linux platform.