Merry Microsoft Christmas, Oracle and IBM!

Microsoft’s latest operating system, Vista, which went on sale to corporate customers November 30 — can not run the latest version of Microsoft’s corporate database product, MS SQL Server. Microsoft is working on a SQL Server upgrade (SQL Server 2005 Express Service Pack 2), but it’s in beta and available for testing purposes only.

Last month I commented on the lack of internal talks at Microsoft, discussing how their Zune device isn’t compatible with Vista — TechCrunch commenters felt this didn’t matter, considering the consumer release of Vista was months away and that “Microsoft probably does not give a sh*t that some twelve year old cannot use Zune on his pirated copy of Vista yet.” Fair enough. But Vista not working with their corporate database product, SQL Server? That’s not smart for a company trying to grab their piece of the $14 billion database pie.

Update:
I should have better researched this prior to posting. Business 2.0 broke the story and their article simply references “the current version of SQL Server,” but they were merely referring to “MS SQL Server 2005 Express.” Given that’s the case — this isn’t a gift to Oracle or IBM, and this shouldn’t have any effect on Microsoft’s position in the database market. My apologies for this.

Editor’s Note: This post was written by Steve Poland, a guest contributor. Steve is the founder and web strategy consultant for Vested Ventures, a firm specializing in website consulting, internet marketing, and high-end custom web development.