It seemed just yesterday that Microsoft stopped support for Windows Server 2003 (July 14, 2015 technically speaking), but ultimately, SQL Server 2005’s time has come.

Despite its age, up to 30 per cent of firms is still using it in Canada to save and retrieve sales information, based on Microsoft’s approximations in January.

“It’s like an old automobile,” Eduard Davidzhan, an information platform marketing manager with Microsoft, told ITWorldCanada.com before this year. Many companies continue to make use of the earlier applications without understanding their first economies could be exceeded by the expense of an emergency, as it does the same occupation as the newer version, and for a lesser price.

There are other security-related benefits to buying the newest database software, he says: For instance, the 2014 version contains encryption choices that only did’t exist in 2005.

Modern variants additionally perform significantly quicker, with the 2014 version running up to 13 times faster than the 2005 version, he says, and enable business owners to analyse their particular database info. Davidzhan notes that companies will have more than one upgrade to select from – SQL Server 2014 can be purchased by them, or update to Microsoft’s cloud service, Azure SQL Database.