Low total cost of ownership
Competitively priced SQL Server 2008 database software helps increase overall profit margins, publishing tools facilitate faster customer deployment, and tools for Policy-Based Management and performance data collection reduce administration costs. Save even more by installing SQL Server 2008 on a Hyper-V™–based server: Licensing SQL Server 2008 Enterprise to the host partition allows you to use it on all the guests. This way you can divide the licensing costs among all guests.

Highly scalable
With the Web and Enterprise editions, scale your business with unlimited memory support or database size. SQL Server 2008 supports multiple CPUs: 32 CPUs for Enterprise and 4 CPUs for Web.

Highly available
Specifically designed for highly available, Internet-facing, Web-serving environments, SQL Server 2008 has more robust capabilities than previous versions of SQL Server.

Powerful programmability
Already compatible with popular PHP open source applications, SQL Server offers built-in support for PHP applications as well as seamless interoperability with the Microsoft .NET environment. The ADO.NET Entity Framework helps increase developer productivity, and new LINQ extensions revolutionize how developers query data. Also included is support for basic to advanced data types, including spatial, date/time, word documents, videos, and images. This helps you meet a variety of customer application requirements.

Business intelligence
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) with built-in business intelligence is included in SQL Server 2008, making it possible to create unique layouts and use the new visualization enhancements to further enrich your reports.