Microsoft SQL Server 2005, The End of an Era

My focus over the past 15 years has been on developing, marketing and selling Education Technology. Therefore, I wanted to share an article regarding Microsoft's SQL Server 2005, since many of teams I have worked with have used this Relational Database Management Technology. Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 was one of the best Relational Database Management Technologies of its time and now it is finally facing "end of life," meaning that Microsoft will no longer support security updates for this product.

With the change scheduled for April, 2016, IT professionals will need to create a migration plan immediately if they haven't done so already. Of course, as a Certified Project Management Professional, I would always suggest that a Certified Project Manager lead the IT team throughout this migration. For smaller companies that cannot afford a Certified Project Manager, Microsoft offers some tools called, Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, to help teams create an efficient and effective migration. SQL 2005 users can migrate to the physical or virtual version of SQL Server 2014, or Microsoft Azure SQL Database. Although colleges and education technology companies can continue to run in SQL Server 2005, Microsoft officials warn that they will face serious risks by running on an unsupported database.

Some of the risks colleges and businesses alike face include:

1. Performance - the upgrades will perform 13 times faster than SQL Server 2005; 30 times faster transactional performance (On-line Transactional Processing, OLTP), and 100 times faster query performance (On-line Analytical Processing, OLAP) .

2. Availability - according to http://blogs.technet.com/, these are the features that the upgrade will provide in terms of availability:

SQL Server AlwaysOn Delayed Durability Recovery Advisor Windows Server Core Live Migration On-line Operations enhancements Clustered Shared Volume support, VHDX support Manage on-premises and cloud apps

3. Security - updates and patches are available on the upgrades, but not on SQL Server 2005. Without these updates and patches, they will be unprotected against new threats leaving them in noncompliance with corporate and regulatory requirements.

4. Manageability - control failure could lead to certifications becoming suspended with public notification that customer information is at risk.

Based on these risks, if colleges and businesses do not upgrade from SQL Server 2005, their performance and security costs will remain high and public notification of suspended certifications could cause them to lose business. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 was once one of the greatest Relational Databases of the 21st Century, but now it's time for it to sunset so that the new demand technology and users place on databases can be handled properly, efficiently, and most importantly, securely.

Sources:

Goldstein, Phil, and D. Frank Smith. "Colleges Face Security Risks as Microsoft Prepares SQL Server 2005 for End of Life." Ed Tech. N.p., 29 Dec. 2015. Web. <http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2015/12/colleges-face-security-risks-microsoft-prepares-sql-server-2005-end-life>.
D., Eduard. "SQL Server 2014. Benefits of Upgrading from SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2008R2 and 2012." Http://blogs.technet.com/. N.p., 1 Apr. 2014. Web. <http://blogs.technet.com/b/cansql/archive/2014/04/14/sql-server-2014-benefits-of-upgrading-from-sql-server-2005-2008-2008r2-and-2012.aspx>.
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