Providing customers with cutting-edge technology that is both immediately usable and deployable is nothing new for Microsoft Corp. Many years ago, the developers of Microsoft SQL Server made a bet on database technology that made their product stand out from the competition. The goal was to increase customer benefit by integrating features that other vendors offered as costly additions. Today, the tradition endures. While the competition is only now announcing "new" products with integrated features such as scale-out functionality for commodity hardware, advanced analytics, and automated management and tuning, SQL Server customers have already successfully deployed applications that solve real business problems with these features.

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