As of May 12

May 13, 2010 13:37 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft Volume License customers can now access the latest iteration of the company’s data platform. The software giant gave the green light to SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM volume licensing downloads on May 12th, 2010, concomitantly with the worldwide availability of Office 2010 RTM and SharePoint Server 2010 RTM. Released to manufacturing on April 21st, SQL Server 2008 R2 is offered to VL customers around the world in English, but also in a variety of localized versions.

One of the aspects of SQL Server 2008 R2 that Microsoft has continually focused on when pushing the data platform to customers is related to the evolution of the product’s Business Intelligence capabilities. In fact, it’s no coincidence that Microsoft chose May 12 to allow businesses access to SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM. This, because the latest version of the data platform is intimately connected with Office 2010 Excel and SharePoint Server 2010 via PowerPivot, a new add-in designed to take BI to the next level for Microsoft’s technologies.

“Until now, if business users wanted to take advantage of the large volumes of data their company collected, they had to ask their IT department to generate a report but with the managed self-service BI capabilities in SQL Server 2008 R2, they’ll be able to do such analyses themselves,” Donald Farmer, principal program manager for SQL Server, explained. “That means they’ll be able to answer questions more quickly, experiment more, and test ‘what if’ scenarios. Organizations can become more agile. That’s exciting.”

Microsoft had promised when SQL Server 2008 R2 was still in development that customers would be able to purchase the product starting in May 2010, and it looks like the software giant lived up to its word. Trial versions of SQL Server 2008 R2 are already available for download, and MSDN and TechNet subscribers can access the RTM bits from the company’s developer and IT professional portals, respectively.

“In addition to participation in [the](…) Office launch, the SQL Server 2008 R2 worldwide launch tour is well underway and boasts approximately 100 cities from Johannesburg, South Africa to Seoul, Korea, with more than 20,000 customers expected to attend one of the worldwide events. Events that have already taken place have been received with great enthusiasm including PASS Asia 2010, European PASS 2010, Portugal TechDays and UK TechDays,” an SQL Server team member stated.

The new SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM downloads are available here.