Welcome to the October newsletter from Australia's leading SQL Server Consultants, Trainers and Business Intelligence specialists

WARDY IT Solutions is continuing to provide innovative solutions for customers whether they are deploying SQL Server as a Service (SSaaS) or extending SQL Server to the public cloud and achieving insight with Big Data. This innovation has been recognised by WARDY IT Solutions being awarded the 2012 Business Intelligence Partner of the Year Award.

The Microsoft Australia Partner Awards (MAPA) recognises the best of breed Microsoft Partners each year. WARDY IT Solutions has won a prestigious MAPA award since 2009; reconfirming WARDY IT Solutions as Australia's leading SQL Server consultants, trainers and Business Intelligence specialists.

WARDY IT Solutions continues to be the leader in innovative Microsoft SQL Server Solutions throughout APAC with our practice continuing to grow. For the second year running WARDY IT Solutions has made the list for the Deloitte Technology Fast 50.

One of the areas where WARDY IT Solutions continues to deliver innovation is through SQL Server training including the introduction of SQL Server Platinum Training. WARDY IT Solutions is brining SQL Server High Availability expert Allan Hirt to Australia for a High Availability & Disaster Recovery workshop in Brisbane and Canberra throughout November that will be based on SQL Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012. For more details and to register for this exclusive workshop refer to here.

And keep an eye out over the coming weeks as we make announcements about some of the other innovative solutions we are releasing in the Microsoft SQL Server marketplace.

If you are attending the Gartner Symposium in November make sure you drop into the WARDY IT Solutions booth and find out more about our innovative SQL Server solutions and how we can assist your organisation transform Data to Information to Intelligence to Insight to Innovation.

You can keep updated on all the latest WARDY IT Solutions SQL Server news on Facebook & Twitter:

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Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems

Gartner has positioned Microsoft in the Leaders Quadrant in the 2012 Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems, based on its completeness of vision and ability to execute in the data warehouse DBMS market. To read the full Gartner report refer to here.

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Administering SQL Server 2012 Training Kit

If you are looking for the skills and confidence to administer SQL Server 2012 then this is the book for you. This training kit allows you to work at your own pace through a series of lessons and reviews that fully cover each exam objective. The training kit then allows you to reinforce and apply what you've learned through real-world case scenarios and practice exercises. For more details about the Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 training kit refer to here.

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Virtualizing Tier-1 SQL Server Workloads with Confidence

A recent ESG Lab report has been released that documents the results of independent, hands-on testing of the performance, scalability, and efficiency of Microsoft’s Windows Server 2012 with improved Hyper-V virtualization. ESG Lab tested with a tier-1 virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012 application workload to confirm that Hyper-V can be used to increase scalability, maintain enterprise-level performance, and reduce the total cost of ownership. To find out more about more and read this report refer to here.

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Fast Track Reference Guide for SQL Server 2012

A white paper has been released for the SQL Server 2012 Fast Track Data Warehouse. The Fast Track Data Warehouse is a reference configuration model using a resource balanced approach to implementing a database system architecture with proven performance and scalability for data warehouse workloads. The goal of a Fast Track Data Warehouse reference architecture is to achieve an efficient resource balance between SQL Server data processing capability and realized component hardware throughput. To find out more about this architecture refer to here.

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SQL Server 2012 HA & DR Deep-Dive

WARDY IT Solutions is proud to be bringing Allan Hirt to Australia for the next round of our SQL Server Platinum Training events.

Whether your business hours are 9 to 5 or 24x7x365, your systems need to be up when you need them. This advanced 4-day workshop is designed for SQL Server professionals and IT admins alike will not only teach you the technical and non-technical things you need to have solid high availability and disaster recovery solutions, but also show you demonstrations and hands-on labs with multiple versions of SQL Server. Planning, implementing, and administering of the solutions will be covered, and will be taught by Cluster MVP, author, and SQL Server high availability expert Allan Hirt.

For more information about this exclusive SQL Server High Availability & Disaster Recovery Deep-Dive workshop refer to here.

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SQL Server Analysis Services to Hive

A new white paper has been released that illustrates a cost-effective way to combine the power of Hadoop with the power of SQL Server Analysis Services. The result is a solution that connects Analysis Services to Hadoop/Hive via the relational SQL Server engine, reducing data latencies, eliminating maintenance overhead and costs, allowing aggregation processing with Hadoop, and shortening development cycles dramatically. To find out more about this Big Data solution refer to here.

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SQL Server Healthcheck

Does your SQL Server environment need a Healthcheck? The WARDY IT Solutions SQL Server Healthcheck is designed to review and verify the implementation of common SQL Server Best Practices. Our Database Healthcheck includes all the usage and administration aspects of a SQL Server database, ensuring that your SQL Servers are managed and operated well. Our approach is to analyse the total health of your SQL Server environment and highlight areas of concern, providing recommendations to improve the health and performance of your database environment. For more details on our SQL Server Healthcheck refer here.

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SQL Server 2012 Upgrade Guide

Are you thinking of upgrading to SQL Server 2012? Well the Technical Upgrade Guide should be your first stop. This guide takes you through the essentials for upgrading SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008 R2 instances to SQL Server 2012. To download the guide refer to here.

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Understanding Big Data

In an age where everything is measurable, understanding big data is an essential. From creating new data-driven products through to increasing operational efficiency, big data has the potential to make your organization both more competitive and more innovative. As this emerging field transitions from the bleeding edge to enterprise infrastructure, it's vital to understand not only the technologies involved, but the organizational and cultural demands of being data-driven. For a free eBook to help you understand what Big Data is refer to here.

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SQL Server Virtual DBA

WARDY IT Solutions Virtual DBA service was named one of Australia's 100 most innovative products or services for the second year running in the Anthill Magazine 'SMART 100' Index.

Something you may not know is that our Virtual DBA can be utilised for phone and email support. So, if your organisation just needs someone that they can call on for advice then why not use a Virtual DBA?

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