PASS Summit 2013 Keynote: Microsoft's Data Platform - The Road Ahead

The keynote entitled Microsoft's Data Platform - The Road Ahead  was delivered by Quentin Clark. The way forward is about delivering a complete data platform which is a continuous data solution. It is about a story of transformation from independent components being merged into one integrated whole solution. The analogy given was that of a department store.

The new in-memory architecture built into the platform runs on existing hardware and delivers breakthrough performance. The architectural changes on the platform increase performance for OLTP, Analytics and Excel.

Breakthroughs in availability and recovery mentioned the AlwaysOn secondaries in Windows Azure and backup to Windows Azure feature allowing for integrated hybrid products. The freely downloadable tool will support backups of all versions of SQL Server into Azure.

Encryption support for backups is built into SQL Server 2014 with the certificates stored on premises.

Data Files can be stored in Windows Azure. This addition means you can have a mix and match set of data files attached to a single database.

Querying all data components include the new feature Polybase in PDW 2.0, that combines structured and unstructured data. Simplicity is the aim with the Hadoop projects,  HDinsight and accelerated data warehousing provisioning.

Real time insights for everyone can be drawn from the tools Power Query, Power Pivot, Power View, Power Map, Power BI Q & A and Power BI sites.  The sharing of globally available information sets increases the understanding of data. The simplicity of data in Power BI  Q & A allows you to ask a question in natural language.

Concluding Quentin stated it is the excellence of all data that affects line of business and this will change how organizations compete. Big changes are coming in architecture design to build continuous platforms.

He announced the availability of SQL Server 2014 Community Technology Preview 2 (CTP 2)
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http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn169381%28v=sql.15%29.aspx