New SQL Azure Reporting CTP Available for Testing

Microsoft made another step forward when it comes to offering comprehensive business intelligence capabilities in the Cloud to customers leveraging Windows Azure.

The Redmond company announced the availability of a new testing milestone of SQL Azure Reporting. Early adopters that tested the previous Community Technology Preview release of SQL Azure Reporting will be able to notice a number of enhancements in the latest CTP.

According to Microsoft, the new SQL Azure Reporting CTP can already be tested by all customers leveraging its Cloud data platform, provided that they don’t have a limited sign-up capacity.

Early adopters interested in seeing what SQL Azure Reporting has to offer need to head over to the Windows Azure Management Portal and start testing the CTP.

Gregory Leake, a product manager on the SQL Azure Technical Marketing team at Microsoft, summarized some of the most important improvements delivered by the new SQL Azure Reporting CTP:

“• Improved availability and performance statistics.

• Ability to self-provision a SQL Azure Reporting server.

• Windows Azure Management Portal updates to easily manage users and reports deployed to SQL Azure Reporting.

• Availability of the service in all Microsoft Windows Azure datacenters around the world.

• Official Microsoft support in this new CTP release.

• Greater access for customers with no separate registration process required to use the new CTP.”

What Microsoft is trying to offer customers with SQL Azure Reporting is essentially a Cloud flavor of the SQL Server Reporting services on-premises.

In this regard, the software giant has tied a number of APIs to SQL Azure Reporting, which can be leveraged in order to visualize data in the Cloud.

“SQL Azure Reporting is a flexible and cost effective cloud-based reporting capability that allows organizations to develop and rapidly deploy reports that deliver insights to business users,” Leake added.

“With SQL Azure Reporting, organizations can use a familiar platform and tools to deliver a cloud-based reporting capability that complements on premises reporting at a lower upfront cost.”