Portability and AI accessibility are Microsoft's new mantras ZDNet

At a fireside chat at Microsoft's Ignite conference in Orlando this week, CEO Satya Nadella conceded to moderator Walter Isaacson that one of his goals was for Microsoft to once again become a curious company that admits it doesn't know it all. Part of being curious is coming out of its comfort zone, something we saw additional evidence of with announcements, especially with SQL Server, coming out of the conference this week. Release of SQL Server 2017 on both Windows and Linux was obviously not a surprise -- Microsoft declared its intentions roughly 18 months ago. But it was the latest step in a process of making Linux a first-class citizen, especially on the platform that really matters to Microsoft, the Azure cloud (for the record, SQL Server on Linux is also available in an on-premise edition). The definitive SQL Server 2017 story has already been told by Big on Data bro Andrew Brust on these pages.