As announced today by Microsoft at the PASS summit, the corporation is launching new business intelligence and mission-critical workloads offerings with some very amusing nicknames. These include the next gen MS SQL server nicknamed Denali (including web-based data visualization and reporting tool Crescent) , a new Microsoft Critical Advantage Program, the new Community Technology Preview and Atlanta, an upgraded MS cloud service overseeing SQL server config and last but not least, an updated MCM program for SQL professionals.

“Combined, the product [Denali] and [Critical Advantage] program help enterprise customers successfully design, deploy and optimize appliance-based solutions to help ensure the highest level of scalability, availability and reliability for the most demanding data warehouse requirements.”

In addition to the launch of a handsome amount of new offerings aimed for mass adoption, Microsoft has also made quite a few partnerships today, as establishing some connections is always a good call – particularly at Microsoft’s scale. Enhanced cloud offerings, an allegedly new and improved SQL server aimed to deliver added data management simplicity, scalability etc and multiple program offerings are something that have the potential to appeal to many organizations, but at the end of the day, it’s all about quality and presentation.

Microsoft has been doing a few things to adapt its cloud offerings to some noted trends,  which it’s doing in Microsft style–partnerships.  We’re seeing some other scalability developments from competitors like Oracle.  Relatively smaller copetitors are teaming up to combat any efforts Microsoft’s got coming, piecing togehter comprehensive solutions that are merging closer to a unified platform.