“Customer service will prove to be the ultimate bottom line for the 64-bit SQL Server”

Microsoft is ready with the SQL Server 2000 64-bit edition. Tarun Malik, Microsoft India’s product manager for business tools spoke to Rahul Neel Mani about the software major’s latest offering

What is new about Microsoft’s 64-bit SQL Server?
Anybody using databases in the real world would look at more computing power, larger size of memory and enough capability to support huge amount of transactions. It holds special significance in areas like business intelligence for companies doing financial services, ITES, and BPO—companies that make use of data warehouses in a real sense. In such a scenario there were two constraints for the customer: One, the server architecture (processor) and second, the software, which helps in computing. With the new Windows 2003 Server architecture, Microsoft is also launching the 64-bit SQL Server, which will bring down the cost of ownership. Besides this, transaction time, time-to-market and also the time-to-response will also come down significantly. It will happen without actually spending extra on memory. From a 4 GB memory, it will scale up to 128 GB. The consumer is not paying anything extra for getting 64-bit computing power. Most components are in-built in the Windows Server 2003 edition.

Is the market ready to migrate from 32-bit to 64-bit?
Firstly, hardware vendors are already prepared with their equipment—Intel’s Itanium 2, Unisys and NEC machines are available with 64-bit computing power. Secondly, when the customer wants to scale up, he looks at three things: One, the cost of procuring hardware, two, the cost of upgrading the application and three, the cost of upgrading software. Microsoft has taken care of the cost of software with no incremental cost where the normal 32-bit enterprise edition SQL Server is being upgraded to 64-bit. When we introduce a new version or new product there is a lot of research that goes in that process. The same holds true for the 64-bit edition of SQL Server too. Based on customer feedback, it normally takes us three years to come out with a new product. So, it’s the customer who decided to move on to 64-bit and not vendors.

How does SQL 64-bit fare vis-à-vis competition?
Independent agencies have rated SQL to be better in terms of total cost of ownership (TCO). Transaction per minute (Tpmc) tests was also record-breaking. When we look at competition, we rate the product based on the value that the customer derives out of it. For the customer, Microsoft is providing a highly scalable solution at no incremental cost, which is also extremely secure by using Windows 2003 Server and having better OLTP I think this offering will surely beat competition.

Is there any bottom line consideration for the customer to switch over to 64-bit?
Time to market comes down drastically by using SQL Server 64-bit. Customer service, which is the call of the day, and which is in no way possible on current systems, will prove to be the ultimate bottom line for this product.

Does the 64-bit offer consolidation?
Windows 2003 itself offers server consolidation, where the customer can re-look at deployed technology and define a migration path, which will include the hardware that is currently being used and also the software. Microsoft is also interested in the fact that customers consolidate their servers. Today, the worldwide trend is not to spend more on hardware but to consolidate their servers. All our solutions are being offered on a common platform.

Let’s assume that the software cost will remain constant, but what about the hardware cost attached to the migration path from 32-bit to 64-bit?
Let’s understand this equation from a different perspective. If a customer wants to buy a Unix-based system, he goes for a SunSPARC server or a RISC processor. The CIO wouldn’t like to compromise on security and computing power because the time-to-market element is crucial. Today the biggest customers, who are looking at data warehousing solutions, are looking at adopting a technology that will improve time-to-market without any incremental cost and the 64-bit SQL Server 2000 Enterprise edition is offering just that.

Till when will you be supporting the earlier version of SQL Server?
Microsoft is not changing the version. SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition remains the same. We are just introducing the 64-bit platform. Till the next version of SQL Server comes to market (code named UKON, which has also been allotted one of the largest R&D investments so far at Microsoft), which is a year-and-a-half away, the support for this version will continue.