Today, Microsoft Canada Co. announced the launch of SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 development system and the upcoming release of BizTalk Server 2006. With these releases, Microsoft is delivering a broad family of software that offers unprecedented productivity to developers and organizations, while giving enterprise customers a scalable platform to help gain greater and faster insight into their business decisions.

“Microsoft’s customers demands are changing and there is an opportunity to deliver a platform that will better enable people to add more value, gain greater insight and play an even bigger role in the success of their organizations,” said David Hemler, president, Microsoft Canada Co. “Today’s launch delivers a set of new platform capabilities that offer an unprecedented level of integration between the server infrastructure and development tools. This ultimately gives customers the software to help make an impact on business results in a more tangible way.”

According to industry analyst firm IDC, the new software will help Canadian companies to reap better business value.

“The criterion that Canadian organizations cite as most important for the purchase of a database is the quality of the management tools. This is consistent with other IDC Canada findings that point to the importance of delivering greater productivity – the better the tools, the easier it is for tasks to be completed at a lower cost,” said David Senf, manager, Canadian Software Research at IDC Canada. “Together, SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 help address these key business needs.”

A New Era of Opportunity; Technology Partners and Customers See Immediate Results

Some of Canada’s premier companies, including TD Canada Trust, RBC, Toronto.com, Coast Mountain Bus and WorkSafeBC, have leveraged the Microsoft-based application platform to achieve greater business value across their organizations.

“We’ve been very successful in delivering a variety of innovative solutions using the Microsoft-based development environment, from e-business applications to our wireless mobility solution,” said Brian Cooper, CIO, WorkSafeBC. “We were particularly interested in using Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 on our WorkSafe Mobility project, as it will not just be a point solution for our prevention officers, but also a foundation for all of our mobile solutions over the next few years. As such, we wanted to use the latest tools that would give us the best productivity and functionality available.”

Microsoft technology partners such as HP, Squirrel Systems, imason and Active Networks have implemented SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 across a variety of vertical and horizontal industries. Customers can benefit from their deep knowledge of the platform and their ability to harness its capabilities to deliver enterprise-class solutions.

“These new products deliver more than just a platform any business can trust to build and run its most demanding, mission-critical applications. With SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005, companies can take advantage of a rich set of new capabilities that will help the people within their organizations to better understand their business and drive for better bottom-line results,” said Scott Howlett, principal, imason inc.

The advancements Microsoft is delivering with Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 build on the foundation put in place over the last several years with significant investments in Windows Server(TM) 2003 and Microsoft .NET, providing developers and IT professionals with a dependable application platform that has underlying support for Web services and service orientation capabilities.

As part of Microsoft’s new enterprise-focused tools, Visual Studio Team System is designed to address the growing complexity of the software development lifecycle. Because of the deep integration of Visual Studio Team System with SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006, these products help break down the barriers between the architect, tester, developer and project manager to enable better collaboration across distributed environments and speed business-driven software delivery.

Furthering Microsoft’s move to more role specific software, the expanded set of product offerings was created to meet the unique requirements of audiences spanning hobbyists and students to enterprise architects. With Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, Microsoft provides easy to use database and development tools to hobbyists and students to construct Windows-based applications and Web sites for personal use and enjoyment.