SQL Server 2016, an intelligent platform for a mobile first, cloud first world

Microsoft, announced SQL Server 2016, an intelligent platform for a mobile first, cloud first world.

Top capabilities for the release include:

Always Encrypted - a new capability that protects data at rest and in motion



Stretch Database - new technology that lets you dynamically stretch your warm and cold transactional data to Microsoft Azure



Enhancements to in-memory technologies and new in-database analytics with R integration.



Built-in Advanced Analytics, PolyBase and Mobile BI



Additional capabilities in SQL Server 2016 include:

• Additional security enhancements for Row-level Security and Dynamic Data Masking to round out our security investments with Always Encrypted.

• Improvements to AlwaysOn for more robust availability and disaster recovery with multiple synchronous replicas and secondary load balancing.

• Native JSON support to offer better performance and support for your many types of your data.

• SQL Server Enterprise Information Management (EIM) tools and Analysis Services get an upgrade in performance, usability and scalability.

• Faster hybrid backups, high availability and disaster recovery scenarios to backup and restore your on-premises databases to Azure and place your SQL Server AlwaysOn secondaries in Azure.

In addition, there are many more capabilities coming with SQL Server 2016 that deliver mission critical performance, deeper insights on your data and allow you to reap the benefits of hyper-scale cloud.