Just like the fine Sydney weather today, some great announcements about our SQL Azure Cloud offering

SQL Azure Extends to 50 GB

  • SQL Azure database is now extending from 10GB to 50GB size of database storage capacity.
  • With 50 GB capacity now available, customers can have much broader use of the SQL Azure highly available, relational database service for many of their LOB business applications, taking full advantage of the SQL Azure elasticity, ease of provisioning and managing and familiar development environment and tools.
  • The new 50GB database size will be available to our customers worldwide starting June 28th

SQL Azure Subscription Offer

  • Microsoft is offering more flexible ways for customers to try larger SQL Azure databases. Starting August 1st, we will have a new discounted SQL Azure promotional offer (SQL Azure Development Accelerator Core) to customers, allowing them to subscribe to larger SQL Azure databases at a significant discount. This offer includes exclusively SQL Azure Business Edition database and will enable customers to use the larger database size with discounting. More information is available at https://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/.

Public Preview of the Data Sync Service

  • SQL Azure Data Sync Service offers customers flexibility and control over their data, allowing them to make discrete and granular decisions on how their data and which components should be distributed across multiple datacenters in different geographic locations. Based on the customers’ internal policies and business needs, customers are encouraged to register at https://www.sqlazurelabs.com and within 1-2 weeks they will receive an invitation to subscribe to the service.

CTP of the SQL Server Web Manager for SQL Azure to be offered this Summer

  • Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Microsoft SQL Server Web Manager (SSWM), a lightweight and easy to use database management tool for SQL Azure databases, to be offered this summer. SSWM is designed specifically for Web developers and other technology professionals seeking a straightforward solution to quickly develop, deploy, and manage their data-driven applications in the cloud. SSWM is geared toward basic database management tasks such as authoring and executing queries, designing and editing database schema, and editing table data.

Access 10 Support for SQL Azure

  • Microsoft Office 2010 will natively support data connectivity to SQL Azure opening up opportunities for Office users and technology providers to create rich experiences using cloud computing.
  • Provides easy way to connect directly from Office applications to cloud-based relational databases, enabling ease of use and providing flexibility to IT.

The Pre-announced Spatial Data Support to Become Live

  • As it was pre-announced at MIX back in March  ?  https://blogs.msdn.com/b/edkatibah/archive/2010/03/21/spatial-data-support-coming-to-sql-azure.aspx ?  SQL Azure will offer spatial data support. Spatial is a data type for storing location based information (like latitude, longitude) that enables spatial operations like mapping, distance between points, is a location in a region, etc. and enables development of the location aware operations.
  • We're announcing that this capability is now becoming available in SQL Azure.

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