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2.5 min to readPartner Programs

SoftwareOne partners take business intelligence and analytics to the cloud

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Rodrigo EleoterioGlobal Channel as a Service Leader
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It wasn’t long ago that many organizations were investing in on-premises analytical workloads but that trend has significantly shifted to cloud-based services in recent years.  The expansion and innovation of cloud capabilities have greatly accelerated analytics and data science initiatives.  According to the Gartner report Over 100 Data and Analytics Predictions through 2025, "Increasingly, data and analytics has become a primary driver of business strategy, and the potential for data-driven business strategies and information products is greater than ever. This is particularly in response to the continuing situation with COVID-19, which has been an accelerant for digital transformation and data-driven business."

At the end of February 2022, Microsoft coupled four announcements into a release showcasing the future roadmap of SQL Server based on the data evolution:

  • Retirement of SQL Server Big Data Clusters - Microsoft states that users of SQL Server 2019 with Software Assurance will be fully supported on the platform for the next three years, through February 2025.
  • Retirement of PolyBase scale-out groups in Microsoft SQL Server – Scale-out group functionality will be removed from the product in SQL Server 2022.  In-market SQL Server 2019, 2017, and 2016 will continue to support the functionality to the end of support for those products.
  • Cloudera (CDP) and Hortonworks (HDP) external data sources will be retired for all in-market versions of SQL Server – They will not be included in SQL Server 2022.  Support for external data sources will be limited to product versions in mainstream support by the respective vendor.
  • Connectivity to HDFS and object storage will now use publicly documented REST APIs – In SQL Server 2022, users will need to configure their external data sources to use new connectors when connecting to Azure Storage.

Microsoft further states in the release, “If you wish to run analytics on-premises, SQL Server 2022 also provides important new capabilities, building upon its data virtualization suite of connectors by providing object storage integration over REST APIs.”  They go on to say, “Integrating SQL Server with cloud analytics solutions is a critical capability, which is why we are introducing Azure Synapse Link for SQL Server 2022, the latest release of SQL Server, which will be generally available to purchase later this year. This is a major investment in helping you realize cloud-scale analytics in near real-time on your operational data.”

The SoftwareOne partner ecosystem is highly data-driven and there many opportunities for partners to further expand analytics and big data practices in the cloud. We support our partners and indirectly your customers in leveraging technology stacks to fully harvest the advantages of intelligent data management.

Our Application Services team and data engineers have the right capabilities to support you in executing the analysis, design, development, testing, and deployment of reliable information models and managing the Cloud platform required for the solutions to run. Depending on your business needs and existing or planned technology stack, we can implement your strategy in Microsoft Azure.

It’s our mission to help you get the right data, to make the right decisions for the right people at the right time. We will continuously add, update and improve components to transform your operational model according to your information needs.

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Book your meeting with one of our experts

SoftwareOne’s Business Intelligence Delivery Services allow you to get access to the right information at the right time to make informed decisions.

Book your meeting with one of our experts

SoftwareOne’s Business Intelligence Delivery Services allow you to get access to the right information at the right time to make informed decisions.

Author

A man in a black shirt with blue eyes.

Rodrigo Eleoterio
Global Channel as a Service Leader

Partner & Channel Management