REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 23, 1998 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that all of its major, mission-critical business systems – including its SAP R/3 ERP environment, Microsoft Sales and Microsoft product support – are now running on Microsoft® SQL Server
™
7.0 beta 3. This successful transition from SQL Server 6.5, which began last spring with SQL Server 7.0 beta 2, is delivering dramatic business advantages to Microsoft’s daily business operations including financials, manufacturing and distribution, and customer support.
“We are demonstrating the enterprise capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 by running our own multibillion-dollar worldwide business on it,”
said John Connors, CIO of Microsoft.
“The dramatic improvements to SQL Server 7.0 in terms of reliability, operational environment, OLAP technology, and query performance and storage make us very excited as an IT organization.”
The SAP R/3 enterprise resource planning (ERP) environment at Microsoft manages the company’s worldwide financials, human resources, OEM contracts and all procurement transactions. Moving SAP R/3 to SQL Server 7.0 has drastically reduced the update performance time from an average of over 5 seconds to 0.7 seconds. In addition, the total database size has been reduced from 140 GB to 80 GB, system availability has increased substantially, and backup throughput has increased 450 percent.
“Microsoft is taking a leadership role as the first company worldwide to go into production with SAP R/3 on SQL Server 7.0,”
said Ingo Hoffmann, global partner director for Microsoft at SAP AG.
“The successful implementation of this solution by the Microsoft information technology group clearly demonstrates that SAP R/3 and SQL Server 7.0 are ready for our enterprise customers.”
Microsoft Sales, Microsoft’s revenue-reporting data warehouse, consists of 150 GB of sales data that supports business intelligence throughout the corporation, and is used concurrently by more than 1,600 employees worldwide, primarily accountants and sales and marketing people. Since the move to SQL Server 7.0, query performance has increased 57 percent, and backup speed has increased 25 percent.
With SQL Server 7.0, Microsoft’s product support systems – used for call tracking, credit card billing and customer contract information – can now be used concurrently by up to 3,600 support specialists worldwide. SQL Server 7.0 provides Microsoft with the enhanced reliability and scalability imperative to keeping the system up and running continuously, an advantage that translates into better customer service and lower support costs.
Microsoft is also currently converting its corporate Web site ( http://www.microsoft.com/ ) – which is one of the 10 busiest Web sites on the Internet, receiving between 140 million and 200 million hits a day – to SQL Server 7.0.
An interview with Microsoft CIO John Connors further detailing Microsoft’s implementation of SQL Server 7.0 is located at Microsoft’s PressPass Web site, http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1998/9-23sql.htm ; and a detailed case study on Microsoft’s use of SQL Server 7.0 will be available the week of Sept. 28 on the SQL Server Web site, http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ .
Created by a world-class development team, Microsoft SQL Server is a leading Windows NT® Server operating system-based database, bringing business advantage and improved decision-making to all levels of an organization through the power of data warehousing, industry solutions and integration with Microsoft Office. Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 enables independent software vendors and customers to build and deploy scalable database solutions for e-commerce, line of business, mobile computing and data warehousing. Microsoft SQL Server is also a member of the Microsoft BackOffice® family, a comprehensive, integrated suite of servers that makes it easy to build, manage and deploy powerful business solutions. The final version of SQL Server 7.0 is scheduled to ship by the fourth quarter of this year.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day.
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