New SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition to Target SMBs

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft last week released product configuration and pricing details for its SQL Server 2005 "Yukon" database line, which will ship this summer, more than two years late. New features will accompany price increases in the Enterprise and Standard editions, while small and medium sized business (SMBs) will be courted with a new affordable Workgroup edition, which will be available for both SQL Server 2000 and 2005 databases, and sold and supported by Dell.

Microsoft doesn't normally disclose packaging and pricing for a product until releasing the product to manufacturing, or is very close to doing so. However, with Yukon well behind schedule, and customers on long-term maintenance contracts up for renewal, Microsoft decided to appease the market by pre-releasing the nitty gritty details, even with another round of beta testing--Yukon's third round--still to start later this month.

SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition is designed for use by large customers running large ERP and business intelligence workloads. Microsoft says it has bolstered this release with new data partitioning, database mirroring, analytic, integration, reporting, and backup and operational capabilities to ensure availability. This edition will cost $25,000 per processor, a 25 percent increase from the $20,000-per-processor price tag of SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition; there are similar increases in the assorted client access license (CAL)-based pricing schemes Microsoft offers as an alternative to processor-based pricing.

SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition, which is targeted at medium sized businesses, will ship with features that were previously only available in the Enterprise Edition of the product line, such as advanced backup and recovery options and 64-bit support (Intel and AMD X64 processors, and Intel Itanium 2). Standard Edition will run on servers with up to four processors, but there is no limit on the amount of memory, or the size of the database. Users can pay about $6,000 per processor--a 20 percent increase from SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition--or pay similar increases in the CAL licensing schemes.

As the Enterprise and Standard Editions climb up the functionality (and price) ladder, Microsoft has inserted the new low-cost Workgroup Edition to attract a new generation of SQL Server users. The Workgroup Edition provides basic database functionality and installs on servers with up to two processors and up to 2 GB of memory, although there's no limit to the size of the database itself. A Workgroup Edition is available now for SQL Server 2000, and will be available for SQL Server 2005 with the other editions later this summer. Both versions will cost $3,899.

The Workgroup Editions help Microsoft keep up with Oracle and IBM, both of which launched less-expensive and scaled-down versions of their database systems last year. Microsoft also launched SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, a free version of the product designed for developer training and embedded database applications. Express replaces Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE), which was also free.

Microsoft is partnering with volume PC leader Dell to sell a bundled package combining the new SQL Server 2000 and 2005 Workgroup Editions and its PowerEdge servers. In addition to pre-loading the database software onto its servers, Dell will provide troubleshooting and 30-day access to its help line.

Dell says the combination of SQL Server 2000 Workgroup Edition and a PowerEdge 2800 equipped with one 3.4 GHz Intel Xeon processor and Windows Server 2003 provides better price/performance than SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition. According to a test published by the Transaction Processing Performance Council last week, this setup, which cost $39,340, yielded 28,122 transactions per minute (TPM) on the TPC-C test, giving it a price/performance of $1.40/TPMc, compared to $1.50/TPMc for the same setup using SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition.

"The industry has changed since we introduced SQL Server 2000," says Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Server Applications at Microsoft. "Our goal is to make enterprise-class data management and analysis affordable to a wide range of customers while driving complexity out of database systems--all at a lower total cost of ownership."

More Changes

The two biggest changes Microsoft will be making with the SQL Server 2005 line are the price increases in the Standard and Enterprise editions, and the addition of the Workgroup edition. But those aren't the only changes that will accompany the release of SQL Server 2005 later this year.

It will be easier for SQL Server 2005 users to create high availability environments, Microsoft says, since it will allow them to utilize passive failover servers with SQL Server 2005 without requiring additional licenses. Previously, Microsoft would waive the additional license only for other SQL Server 2000 instances installed on a node in a cluster. Now, that benefit extends to standby and hot-failover servers, as well.

Microsoft also reiterated its SQL Server 2005 pricing policy for multicore processors, which it expects will help grab market share from its main competitors in the database arena, Oracle and IBM. In 2004, Microsoft announced it would treat multi-core processors as a single processor for pricing purposes, effectively cutting in half the per-processor fee customers would pay for installing SQL Server 2005 on today's modern dual-core processors.

Oracle and IBM still charge customers full price for multi-core processors, by treating them as if they were individual processors. With four-processor cores expected from Intel during SQL Server 2005's lifetime, Microsoft's position gives it a hefty advantage. Realistically, however, it's a just a matter of time before Oracle and IBM must capitulate and reduce the fees they charge for databases.

SQL Server 2005, along with Visual Studio 2005, is a key component of Microsoft's 64-bit strategy, and will lay the foundation for 64-bit applications running on Microsoft Windows Server X64 Edition, which is expected to ship later this year. Microsoft had originally planned to ship SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 last year, but pushed the release dates back, along with Windows Server X64 Edition, as Microsoft focused all development efforts on getting Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) out the door.