Microsoft started its 2nd Annual Business Intelligence (BI) Conference off with a bang yesterday by unveiling several new technologies that will greatly change the face of BI in the next couple of years. Ted Kummert, the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Data and Platform Storage Division, announced that the next SQL Server release (code-named “Kilimanjaro”), which will focus on BI, will be available in the first half of 2010. You can expect to see Kilimanjaro CTPs available in the next year. According to Microsoft, Kilimanjaro “will further enrich SQL Server’s BI capabilities while providing a robust and scalable data platform capable of supporting the largest BI deployments.”

In addition, this release will include a set of managed self-service analysis tools, currently code-named “Gemini.” Business users can use Gemini to perform managed self-service analysis and build BI solutions without having to rely on their IT departments to do it for them. 

At the BI Conference, Microsoft also showed attendees a solution (code-named “Madison”) that will provide scalability that’s capable of supporting very large data warehouses. Madison integrates SQL Server with technology from data warehouse appliance vendor DATAllegro, which Microsoft acquired earlier this year. According to Microsoft, Madison “will be able to handle the most demanding data warehousing workloads spanning hundreds of terabytes of data and thousands of concurrent users at the low total cost of ownership (TCO) businesses have come to expect from SQL Server.” As with Kilimanjaro, Microsoft customers will be able to test Madison via CTPs that will be released in the next year.