SQL Comes To Linux And Here’s What It Means

Who knew this day would come? Microsoft’s SQL will now run on Linux as well. Microsoft which is the world’s biggest software company by size hardly usually build Windows based software. The company has recently though allowed some of its mobile services like Cortana to run on other mobile operating systems but we before now, we had not seen any cross platform announcement of this scale. Since becoming the CEO of Microsoft in February 2014, Satya Nadella has focused on cloud and other enterprise services while attempting to make the mobile division more “effective”. Microsoft has always sold PC software for other companies’ operating systems, like that used by Apple’s Macintosh computers. But since becoming chief executive of Microsoft two years ago, Satya Nadella has gone further by creating software to run on other mobile operating systems like Apple iOS, and decoupling Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing system from Windows according to the New York Times.

Since then sales have been up in those 2 divisions but why now for SQL?

Why Now?

Windows Server orders are dropping while Linux servers are gaining. According to a New York Times report, 3.6 million Linux servers were shipped in 2014, compared with 2.4 million in 2011. Windows servers fell to 6.2 million in that time, from 6.5 million. So you see why this became a necessary business decision. Analysts even believe this may be the first of such major announcements. This was purely a market decision.

Why’s this big?

SQL is Microsoft’s version of Linux’s MySQL. They are both software for managing data. Allowing it to now run on Linux could help bring about a win-win situation where Microsoft brings its products to a growing platform while the growing one can now keeps its users wish to have Microsoft services like the SQL.

We’ll see how it goes