This week at the PASS Summit, Microsoft announced quite a few things. The release of SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse (formerly project Madison) was announced. We first heard of Project Atlanta, which is designed to help you better configure your instances, and we got the first public CTP of the next version of SQL Server, version 11. The code name is Denali, though it seems that many people are already calling it SQL Server 2011. I don't have any information about the target release time frame, but I would suspect that Microsoft is aiming for three years after SQL Server 2008, which would be the August time frame.
This week we have lots of blogs from all around the SQL Server community where it seems that there are already quite a few people working with the product. MVPs could download it a week or so ago, and I'm sure quite a few of them were looking for changes and waiting until the public release to blog their impressions.
I found a nice roadmap from the SQL Server team for Analysis Services that outlines their future thoughts. They explain a new way of modeling the relationships and objects that one will use in the Microsoft BI stack. As they mentioned, this does not mean that the current UDM models are going away. A few blogs had suspected that the UDM model might go away, but that is incorrect.
One of the most exciting things that I saw in Denali is the Project Hadron enhancements. These changes start to move database mirroring to the exciting technology that I had hoped for in SQL Server 2005. Better failover, more options, and more secondaries that you can use to better protect your systems and data. That is definitely something to read about.
One change that I was expecting in SQL Server 2008 R2 was the removal of DTS support, which is finally gone in Denali. I really liked DTS in SQL Server 7, and found it to be quite useful, but SSIS is a much better environment, and if you need ETL process support, you should be migrating your packages to SSIS.
No matter what your environment, take a look at what's new in Denali, and see if there is anything that can help your company. Maybe you can put together a proposal to implement an instance next year and play with the newest SQL Server bits.