Microsoft commissioned ITIC to research and write a detailed White Paper. The paper utilizes secondary research of independent data from publicly available sources to illustrate the viability of SQL Server 2008 R2 and the new PDW edition as an enterprise-class RDBMS platform and the advantages it delivers over the competing Oracle database and Exadata database machine.

This White Paper also cites ITIC's primary research from its independent survey data. None of ITIC's surveys were commissioned or sponsored by Microsoft. ITIC also conducted interviews with one dozen corporate customers to verify and validate Microsoft's claims regarding the performance, reliability, scalability, flexibility and inherent security of the SQL Server 2008 R2 and the PDW edition.