REDMOND, Wash., March 8, 1998 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Microsoft® SQL Server
™
offers a solution whose total cost of ownership (TCO) is 3.7 times lower than that of Oracle, according to independent research done by the Boston-based Aberdeen Group Inc. Aberdeen conducted an analysis of the computer services giant Automatic Data Processing (ADP) Inc.’s decision-making criteria regarding the use of SQL Server vs. Oracle for an enterprisewide customer-service solution.
In addition to its superior TCO savings, SQL Server also meets ADP’s mission-critical needs for performance, scalability and reliability, according to Aberdeen. ADP’s employer services division uses Clarify running on SQL Server as the basis for its 8,000-user, 40-site ACCESS client service and management solution.
“Because of the low TCO of SQL Server, we can focus our resources on improved client service and corporate profitability. This is a tremendous win-win situation for us and our clients,”
said Howard Koenig, corporate vice president of operations and client service at ADP.
“We chose SQL Server because it’s the only database to offer the best of both worlds – the enterprise-class database platform we need as well as the best TCO.”
“Our research showed that SQL Server 6.5 costs ADP 27 percent of the cost of Oracle’s offering when we factored in product licensing, ongoing support and administration. Even upgrading to SQL Server 7.0 would keep total costs at just 36 percent of the cost of Oracle,”
said Chris Martins, senior analyst at Aberdeen Group Inc. A copy of the Aberdeen study can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/productinfo/Aberdeen.htm .
SQL Server Meets Licensing, Continuing Support Cost and Scalability Needs
ADP selected SQL Server for its ACCESS project after determining that the project could run on the Windows NT® Server operating system and Dell hardware for less than one-third the cost of a UNIX/RISC system. ADP also determined that, based on product licensing costs, an Oracle solution would cost 1.6 times more than a SQL Server-based solution.
When factoring in three-year support costs, the Oracle solution was 3.7 times more expensive than SQL Server, making SQL Server even more cost-effective.
Beyond TCO, SQL Server also met the scalability requirements for ADP’s massive customer-service and management solution. The low cost of the Windows NT-based software and Dell hardware made it cost-effective to configure each of the company’s regional systems with enough horsepower to meet any need for transaction throughput, according to the Aberdeen research.
SQL Sets New Price/Performance Record on Industry Benchmark
ADP’s experience is mirrored by that of a growing range of companies finding that the superior TCO, enterprise-class scalability, reliability and functionality of SQL Server make it the leading database on the Windows NT platform. Two weeks ago, Microsoft announced that SQL Server 7.0 Enterprise Edition and Windows NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Edition have set a new price/performance world record on the industry-standard TPC-C benchmark. The results were achieved on a Compaq ProLiant 7000 server with four 450MHz Pentium II Xeon processors. The benchmark result of 22,478 transactions per minute (tpmC) at $18.84/tpmC is the first time any enterprise system has brought price/performance below $20/tpmC and represents the lowest system cost among all comparable four-processor systems. This configuration is available now. Currently, the top 16 TPC-C price/performance benchmark results ever published are on the SQL Server Enterprise Edition platform.
Created by a world-class development team, Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is the leading Windows NT Server-based database, bringing business advantage and improved decision-making to all levels of the organization through the power of data warehousing, industry solutions and interoperability with Microsoft Office.
Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 enables independent software vendors and customers to build and deploy scalable database solutions for business intelligence, business operations, and commerce and mobile solutions. Microsoft SQL Server is a member of the Microsoft BackOffice® family, a set of servers that make it easy to build, manage and deploy powerful business solutions.
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