Microsoft plans to release a testing development milestone of its next generation data platform by the end of this month. The Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Community Summit acted as the stage for Microsoft’s Ted Kummert, senior vice president of the Business Platform Division, to reveal that a Community Technology Preview of SQL Server 2008 R2 would be offered to early adopters by the end of November.

Customers that have kept a close eye on the evolution of the Redmond company’s data platform already know that, during the first half of this year, codename Kilimanjaro (or SQL Server Kilimanjaro) took on the SQL Server 2008 R2 moniker. This is the official label with which the product will hit the market starting next year.

The upcoming release of SQL Server 2008 R2 is, in fact, the second Community Technology Preview offered for the next iteration of the SQL data platform. Microsoft also offered early adopters the chance to test drive SQL Server 2008 R2 in August 2009, when it made the first CTP available to the general public. The Redmond company already confirmed that it was hard at work to deliver the gold version of SQL Server 2008 R2 in mid-2010.

Microsoft revealed that “SQL Server 2008 R2 is the next-generation information platform that is designed to deliver the following:

• Managed self-service business intelligence. Expanding powerful BI tools to all users with SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel and empowering a new class of business users to build and share powerful BI solutions with little or no IT support, while still enabling IT to monitor and manage user-generated BI solutions

• Greater IT and developer efficiency. Enabling administrators to centrally monitor and manage multiple database applications, instances or servers, accelerating the development and deployment of applications and providing improved support for virtualization through Hyper-V with Live Migration in Windows Server 2008 R2

• A trusted and scalable platform. Supporting data consistency across heterogeneous systems through SQL Server Master Data Services, enabling high-scale complex event-stream processing through SQL Server StreamInsight, and supporting scale-up scenarios for the largest available x64 and Itanium hardware (up to 256 logical processors).”

SQL Server 2008 R2 August 2009 CTP is available for download here.