Thank you for the opportunity to work with you this year to demonstrate the possibilities with your data and Cortana Analytics Suite.

I predict that 2016 is going to be a big one with the upcoming release of SQL Server 2016 enabling you to do more with your data, securely either on-premises or in the cloud.

Wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Look forward to a bigger brighter more insightful 2016.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock delivers lower cost, more personalized healthcare - https://youtu.be/-wVeHZNn8aU

Tangerine knows that staying innovative is key to standing out in the crowded world of online banking. By giving its business leaders easier access to customer feedback, the bank has a better sense of exactly the kinds of services customers are looking for. Using this approach, Tangerine can lead in a competitive industry - https://customers.microsoft.com/Pages/CustomerStory.aspx?recid=14594

Data Analytics Vision - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCDD2BdY8Yc 

All of these capabiiltes is being powered by SQL Server on premise and Cortana Analytics in the cloud. With SQL Server 2016 releasing next year, following are the areas you can excpect your business to start taking advantage of:

Performance - SQL Server 2014 bought in-memory to relational databases, maintaining ACID properties. SQL Server 2016 continues to innnovate in this space and delivers Operational Analytics - the ability to combine both OLTP/OLAP workloads in-memory and deliver real time insights to your business. You will not have to create and maintain operational data stores and replicate data, you will be able to place updatable non-clustered column store indexes right on your OLTP tables. This amongst many other performance enhancing capabilities will accelerate your time to insight.

Security - this has been an major area of focus for the engineering team, given organisations are embarking their journey onto the cloud. However putting your data into the cloud still a major barrier, however with the capability of Always Encrypted coming to SQL Server 2016 and already available in SQL Database in Azure, this can give you the confidence of placing your data in the cloud. The reason for this is the data is encrypted at rest, in transit, the only place it gets decrypted is at the client with the new enhanced ADO.NET connector. This is advanced technology from MS Research that will ensure your data is only available to those who have authority to it. This feature combined with other capabiliteis such as enhanced Transparent Database Encyrption (TDE), Row Level Security and Dynamic Data masking will provide the peace of mind your business demands of your data when in the cloud.

Cloud Integration - of course there will be situations where the data may not be able to moved into the cloud due to legislation, or other security requirements. However with the tight Hybrid integration with Azure, there maybe scenarios such as for archiving purposes you can utilise the Stretch Table feature that can enable you to move historical data into the cloud to reduce your storage costs while still ensuring your data is accessible without requiring any application changes. This amongst other tight integrations such as easily enabling Azure as a target destination for DR purposes via tight integration with AlwaysOn Wizard.

Business Intelligence - with the release of PowerBI version 2, you can immediately drive insight into your data with direct connectors into most popular software as a service offerings and also tight connectivity to many other sources such as Teradata, DB2, Sybase, ODBC sources. In case you haven't seen them, you can also download some great sample workbooks at - https://support.powerbi.com/knowledgebase/articles/514904-download-the-power-bi-samples-excel-workbooks

We all know that visulisation is like the icing on the cake, we need to ensure that the underlying base is solid - meaning the data is of quality, meaningful and timely. On this note SQL Server 2016 has several enhancements to the BI components such as MDS (performance and features),SSRS (new HTML5 compliant visualisations, parameter enhancements). SQL Server Analysis services is also getting many enhancements in Tabular model, including DirectQuery, this will enable you to get real time data not only leveraging SQL Server's in-memory capability however also allowing you to query non-SQL Server environments such as Oracle.

Analytics - this is a very exciting space, as not only does this enable a business to go from data to insights, it actually can enable them to automate decision making process and provide their customers with a delightful experience. In this space we acquried Revolution Analytics in April 2015. You will be able to continue to get access to RRO and RRE products, however with SQL Server 2016 you will have integration of RevoR, which will enable you to bring the power of R to your data. This will enable you to quickly operationalise your R models/scripts.

SQL Server 2005 is going to be End of Support by April 2016 - so now is great time to start planning your upgrades and start to take advantage of the more modern SQL Server 2012, 2014 and soon 2016. Microsoft® SQL Server 2016® Upgrade Advisor Preview - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48119

Download - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-sql-server-2016

Imagine how Cortana Analytics Suite can help your organization set new records :)  - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxmAEMmwXYU

Microsoft recognizes that customers need powerful analytical models to make data-driven decisions, and to be enable data science and analytics practices within organizations. That’s why Microsoft acquired Revolution Analytics in April this year, so that more people can use and benefit from R.

In this talk, I’ll share some announcements about bringing R to the Microsoft platforms, such as Azure HDInsight, Azure Machine Learning and SQL Server. I’ll also describe our ongoing open-source R projects, including Revolution R Open, RHadoop, and DeployR Open, with a special focus on the reproducibility tools we have developed for R.

BIO

David Smith is the R Community Lead at Microsoft (which recently acquired Revolution Analytics). With a background in data science, he writes daily about applications of R and predictive analytics at the Revolutions blog (blog.revolutionanalytics.com), and is the co-author of “Introduction to R”, the R manual. Follow David on Twitter as @revodavid.

Register for the meet up at - http://www.meetup.com/R-Users-Sydney/events/223092608/

Azure Services

• Azure DocumentDB - DocumentDB is a fully managed NoSQL document database service that allows applications to query and process JSON data at scale.
• Azure Stream Analytics - a Complex Events Processing (CEP) service that enables real-time insights over streaming data from devices, sensors, infrastructure, and applications.
• Azure Premium Storage - Premium Storage stores data on the latest technology Solid State Drives (SSDs). Premium Storage is designed for Azure Virtual Machine workloads which require consistent high IO performance and low latency in order to host IO intensive workloads like OLTP, Big Data, and Data Warehousing on platforms like SQL Server, MongoDB, Cassandra, and others. You can attach multiple disks to a VM and enable up to 32 TB of storage per VM with more than 64,000 IOPS per VM at low-millisecond latency for read operations.
• Azure App Service -  enables developers to build web and mobile apps for any platform and any device. App Service is an integrated solution that streamlines development while enabling easy integration with on-premises and SaaS systems while providing the ability to quickly automate business processes.App Service includes the following app types:
  • Web Apps – Create mission critical Web apps that scale with your business.
  • Mobile Apps – Engage employees, partners and customers on any device at any time.
  • Logic Apps – Automate business processes across SaaS and on-premises.
  • API Apps – Easily build and consume Cloud APIs within any app.

  Azure App service is more than just for data related, however you can leverage the Logic Apps capability to say bring in data from Twitter, Salesforce, and other APIs into a SQL Database on Azure for example.

Datazen Acquisition

Microsoft recently completed the acquisition of Datazen and made this software available FREE to any customers with SQL Server Enterprise Edition version 2008 or later and Software Assurance. This means millions of people around the world will now be able to visualize and interact with data on their mobile devices, using the native mobile apps available at no charge at the respective app stores. Datazen technology and solutions will complement Power BI, our cloud-based business analytics service, rounding out our mobile capabilities for customers who need a mobile BI solution implemented on-premises and optimized for SQL Server. Over time, we plan to integrate Datazen technology with Power BI to give our customers another hybrid bridge for their on-premises investment to the cloud. Download link - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=529426 The quickest way to get started is to download the Datazen app from your devices App store. Launch the app store and then search for Datazen and install the app. Once installed, launch it and you will be connected to Datazen's demo server which  will enable you to see how it is possible to make insights available to your mobile workforce. Should you wish to try it with your own data, then you can quickly deploy the Datazen server into a Azure VM. See the following document for steps on how to do this - http://1drv.ms/1OSSltP (Note: this is only for quick demo./poc purposes and isn't a best practices guide, refer to manuals that are part of install package for that). I would also like to thank Chris Finlan at Microsoft for providing this great document.

With Power BI our customers can keep a pulse on their business by bringing all their data together and monitor it through a single pane of glass. Live Power BI dashboards and reports show visualizations and KPIs from data that reside both on-premises and in the cloud, providing a consolidated view across the business regardless of where the data lives.

Power BI enables our customers to get started with data in a matter of minutes by making it possible for business users to directly connect with their data without requiring technical or analyst support. You can access popular services such as GitHub, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, SendGrid and Zendesk and we will be adding solutions for Google Analytics, Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, Acumatica, Zuora and Twilio. These solutions enable marketers with subscriptions to these services to connect and view their data from pre-built Power BI dashboards and reports that are updated continuously and automatically.

[View:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3_2uwo6Dv4:0:0]

This latest Azure SQL Database Update (V12) brings near-complete SQL Server engine compatibility, even more Premium performance and marks the first step in delivering the next generation of the SQL Database service. Improved T-SQL compatibility with SQL Server 2014 makes it easier to migrate most on-premises databases to the latest Azure SQL Database Update (V12) using tools that you already use today (e.g. SQL Server Management Studio) with a single-click. The cookbook has details on using these updated tools and other approaches based on the features you use in your on-premises database.

In order to use the recipes in the migration cookbook, please make sure you’ve downloaded and installed the latest tools from the links below:

SQL Server Management Studio 2014 Cumulative Update 5

SQL Server Database Tooling Preview for the latest Azure SQL Database Update V12

SQL Database Migration Wizard

Download the migration cookbook and updated tools today and start moving your databases to the cloud.

Below is a summary of some of the new capabilities that are available in SQL Server 2014 since SQL Server 2005. If you do come across any vendor applications that do not support SQL Server 2014 please leave a comment and we can work with them to help certify their application with SQL Server 2014.

Thank you for your continued support this year. Wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Look forward to a bigger brighter more insightful 2015.

What's New

• Dashboards - user created to monitor most important data. These can be developed using natural language question and answers and pining the visualisation to a dashboard. These dashboards can also be easily shared.
• New Visualisations  - including combo charts, filled maps, gauges, tree maps, and funnel charts
• Support for popular software as a service application - Dynamics CRM Online, Salesforce, Zendesk, Marketo, SendGrid and GitHub with many more coming in the months ahead. This support not only makes it easy to establish a data connection, but PowerBI also provides pre-build dashboards and reports for each of these applications which can then be customised.
  
• New Power BI Designer - are you still running versions of Excel older than 2013 and as such weren't able to take full advantage of PowerBIs capability, well with the new stand alone PoweBI designer app you don't need to rely/wait on IT to upgrade you to Excel 2013. The New Power BI designer lets you import, model data and then author and publish Power BI reports.
• Native ipad App - the native app for Ipad is available in the Apple App store, with the release of native apps for other platforms such as iPhone, Windows 8 and Android in coming months.
  
• Live Hybrid Connectivity to an on-premise SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular Model - With the new Power BI connector for SQL Server Analysis Services, customers can realize the benefits of a cloud-based BI solution without having to move their data to the cloud. Customers can now create a secure connection to an “on-premises” SQL Server Analysis Services server from Power BI in the cloud. When users view and explore dashboards and reports, Power BI will query the on-premise model using the user’s credentials. With this hybrid solution, organizations can continue to retain, manage and secure their data on-premises, while securely enabling users to benefit from that data via Power BI.

To help you get started take a look at the following video - http://support.powerbi.com/knowledgebase/articles/457043-power-bi-getting-started-video-tutorial

Link to the 429 page comprehensive technical guide: here. Remember to start planning your upgrades now as the end of extended support for SQL Server 2005 is on April 12, 2016. For more information see - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/sql-server-2005/ and remember if you have any applications that don't support SQL Server 2014, you can nominate them by sending an email to mailto:isvupgrade@microsoft.com with details of the application name, vendor name, version number, etc. Our ISV teams can assist the application vendor with the upgrade process.