Still on the fence about upgrading to SQL Server 2017? Don’t wait until it’s too late.

There’s been quite a bit of news swirling around recently about Microsoft’s announcement that support would end in early 2020 for Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. If you’re still running these older versions of software, your IT team should be working diligently to ensure your infrastructure is upgraded well in advance of the deadline.

SQL Server in particular powers the databases of many organizations, from small businesses all the way up to Fortune 500 multi-national corporations. If you’ve become accustomed to SQL Server 2008, you’ll be presently surprised by the many new features available when you upgrade to SQL Server 2017.

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Key New Features in SQL Server 2017

Below are just a few of the new features that you’ll have access to when you upgrade from SQL Server 2008 to SQL Server 2017.

High performance for your most mission-critical

SQL Server 2017 is built for performance, scalability and high availability. Easily leverage the power of SQL Server for your most resource intensive database applications.

Choice of operating systems

Microsoft now gives you the choice of running SQL Server 2017 on your Windows or Linux servers. This offers added flexibility depending on how your server infrastructure is currently set up.

Security is paramount

Microsoft SQL Server has had the least security breaches over the past 7 years compared to other prominent database solution providers.

Mobile BI reporting

Out of the box, SQL Server 2017 allows you to deliver high quality reporting to any device, at a small fraction of the cost of other database solutions. Compared to Oracle, SQL Server 2017 Mobile BI reporting is more than 90 percent less expensive.

Artificial intelligence built-in to the platform

Use R or Python + in-memory to analyze massive amounts of data and take advantage of Native T-SQL scoring as well.

Paths to upgrade SQL Server

You have a variety of options when it comes to upgrading your SQL Server instances, including:

On-premises

You can simply upgrade your on-premises server to SQL Server 2017, provided that your hardware is able to handle the updated software.

Azure SQL Database

You can also move your databases to the cloud and utilize SQL Azure, which supports SQL Server’s popular T-SQL query language. This gives you the ability to store your data completely in the cloud, or synchronize data between an on-premises SQL Server and data stored on Azure. According to Microsoft, this option is the most affordable with a reported 406 percent return on investment (ROI) compared to on-premises and other hosted database solutions.

SQL Server on Azure VMs

If you’re looking to move completely to the cloud, you can roll out Azure VMs that can run the latest version of SQL Server. This way you can have all of your data as well as your infrastructure hosted in the cloud, which should significantly cut down on costs. By using VMs, organizations can instantly scale up and down automatically depending on demand. This is much more attractive than having on-premises servers which are expensive to maintain and difficult to provision if you’re looking to scale.

Interested in learning more about upgrading to SQL Server 2017?

If you’re still unsure of your best path when it comes to upgrading to SQL Server 2017, don’t hesitate to reach out to the MessageOps team today. We’ve helped countless organizations of all sizes, upgrade to the latest version of SQL Server and become more efficient all at the same time. Give us a call today at 877-788-1617 to speak with one of our database experts to determine which upgrade option will work best for you and your organization.

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