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SAN FRANCISCO -- Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of Microsoft(R) SQL Server(TM) 2000 Enterprise Edition (64-bit), which is designed to support memory-intensive and high-performance applications running on 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Server(TM) 2003. Microsoft now provides a tightly integrated 64-bit platform that offers customers a clear option for extending their systems to the 64-bit architecture. In addition, it supplies customers with a compelling alternative to UNIX-based solutions through 64-bit capabilities that deliver both high scalability and lower cost of ownership. The announcement was made during the Windows Server 2003 launch event held in San Francisco. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) is being launched in conjunction with Windows Server 2003 and Visual Studio(R) .NET 2003 This trio of products establishes a new standard in business value by providing a tightly integrated platform, data management and application development environment that delivers industry-leading performance, scalability and reliability, and empowers customers to support the budget demands of today's lean IT departments. "The release of a 64-bit version of SQL Server 2000 is an important milestone for Microsoft. The platform should allow customers to improve performance of large-scale database applications, for example data analysis and warehousing solutions or large, complex OLAP analyses, at a lower cost than with more proprietary hardware solutions," said Chris Alliegro, IT analyst at Directions on Microsoft. "Recent TPC benchmarks show that SQL can stand toe-to-toe with UNIX-based solutions on raw performance, and that it can scale to the demands of even the largest customers." SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) Achieves Two No. 1 Benchmarks Microsoft also today announced, along with key industry partners, achievement of the No. 1 result in two benchmarks. The new top TPC-C(1) result of 658,277 transactions per minute (tpmC) at a cost of $9.82/tpmC by HP was announced by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Paul Otellini of Intel Corp. during the keynote address this morning at the launch event in San Francisco. HP achieved the result on its 64-processor Superdome system using the powerful combination of Intel's Itanium 2 chip, SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) and Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition. The price per tpmC is 66 percent less than the cost of the nearest UNIX system result(2). In addition, Siebel Systems Inc., Unisys Corp. and Microsoft have achieved the No. 1 benchmark result for Siebel eBusiness Applications with 30,000 concurrent users running Siebel 7 on a Unisys ES7000 server with the 64-bit versions of SQL Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition(3). This result is a potent proof point for customers that want to ensure that their high-performance ISV applications will scale in the most demanding environments. "With these benchmarks, Microsoft makes a dramatic entry into the 64-bit computing space, and SQL Server continues its rapidly climbing performance trajectory," said Gordon Mangione, corporate vice president of SQL Server at Microsoft. "With its 64-bit offerings, Microsoft has established leadership in an area that was once served only by high-end UNIX operating systems and databases. Together, SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) and Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition have proven they can scale and are more manageable and less expensive to obtain, own and operate than proprietary UNIX systems." Customers Prove They Can Do More With SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) While customers rely on industry benchmarks to gauge a system's performance capabilities, the real proof is in the deployment. Providing enterprise software that enables customers to do more with less is a key tenet for the Windows platform and a theme that is underscored with the release of Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2000 (64-bit). SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) already has been implemented by customers across a variety of vertical and horizontal industries. The following customers have seen dramatic reductions in both hardware and administrative costs that have helped them build robust applications with fewer financial resources: -- Cornell University. Cornell Theory Center uses SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) in developing a new scientific computing paradigm employing database-centric parallel computing and real-time data generation to support computational steering. Computational steering refers to the ability to monitor and manage complex analyses and simulations in real time, using interim results to guide decisions about how to direct, or steer, the ongoing computation. "For years, computational scientists have wrestled with data management issues imposed by file-based storage approaches," said David Lifka, director and chief technical officer of the Cornell Theory Center. "We are developing applications that leverage the scalability of SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) running on Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition to reduce the data management burden." -- IRI. Information Resources Inc. (IRI) manages over 122 terabytes of point-of-sale and consumer information to provide consumer and retailer insights and advanced analytics to some of the largest consumer packaged goods, healthcare, retail and financial companies in the world. To meet increasing customer demand for its business intelligence services while improving scalability and stability, IRI is building a 64-bit Windows Server 2003, SQL Server 2000 and Intel Itanium 2 solution. "The 64-bit SQL Server environment eliminates many of the memory and performance headroom limitations previously encountered, enabling IRI to process more queries using a fraction of the number of servers and ultimately provide significantly improved query performance for its online analytical processing (OLAP) services," said Marshall Gibbs, CIO of IRI. "The environment positions IRI to better serve its clients and keep costs down while simultaneously delivering on the industry's desire for increased speed to insight." -- JetBlue Airways. JetBlue needed a way to manage 10GB of online data for its frequent flyer program with over 750,000 members, expected to double in a year. The goal was to consolidate on a single four-processor Itanium 2-based server, running a single instance of SQL Server 2000 (64-bit). "SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) provided us with the headroom we needed to manage the expected growth of our frequent flier program. It brought down CPU utilization from 65-70 percent down to 10 percent and nearly doubled the amount of transactions we could do per second," says Jeff Cohen, vice president and chief information officer at JetBlue Airways. "The added performance took two days and two people to get it up and running and the performance was better than expected." -- Liberty Medical Supply. Although its current Unisys ES 7000 server operates at 50 percent processor utilization, Liberty Medical Supply's 34 percent growth rate and aggressive expansion plans will rapidly deplete this spare processing power. Liberty Medical uses SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) as the core of virtually its entire operation, supporting more than 1,000 call center staff who manage the daily shipment of over 7,000 deliveries of medical supplies direct to the patient's home. "Our database systems are at the heart of our entire business, and we need a database infrastructure that delivers superior reliability along with the scalability and flexibility to accommodate rapid growth in multiple directions," said George Narr, senior vice president and chief information officer at Liberty Medical Supply. "After installing the 64-bit version of SQL Server 2000, we partitioned off a single four-processor node on the new server and benchmarked it against a similarly configured 32-bit server using test scripts that simulate the load placed on the company's current database servers. The 64-bit system delivered a performance gain of 159 percent, more than two and a half times the processing power of the 32-bit server." -- Johns Hopkins University. Johns Hopkins' Sloan Digital Sky Survey project manages computations for calculating the distances between 300 million celestial objects within a catalog stored in a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database. In testing Intel Itanium-based systems from HP, Johns Hopkins University realized significant performance gains. "Our simulation and complex computations used to take up to six months to complete using 32-bit systems with less memory," said Alex Szalay, alumni centennial professor at Johns Hopkins University. "With SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition (64-bit), we are now able to complete the process in only 10 days. Migrating our databases to SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) was also extremely fast and easy."