Editor’s Note: The Crown Jewels

A company’s data is invariably its most valuable asset. It’s essential to carefully protect that data from harm or malice, and ensure appropriate access.

Lafe Low

It’s a data-driven economy. Today’s enterprises run on data. A sales guy is dead in the water without his contacts. Marketing can’t function without access to lists and customer data, surveys and profiles. There isn’t any aspect of any business that can function without data. It is indeed the lifeblood of the enterprise and a company’s crown jewels.

This month we dive deep into the heavy-hitter in the data-management world: SQL Server. We’re fortunate here at TechNet Magazine to have access to some of the preeminent SQL experts in the country. Paul Randal, one of those experts and our SQL Q&A columnist, provides a rundown of his top 10 tips for SQL management—a must whether you’ve just become a SQL DBA or you have years under your belt. He also tackles some tough data-mirroring situations in his SQL Q&A column.

Because SQL Server is such a significant platform, we have and will continue to cover it on a regular basis, and we wanted to give you a special dose of coverage this month. We’ll also feed up some special SharePoint management coverage, as that’s an equally significant platform for data management, data access and data sharing.

Data Is King

How do you store and manage your customer data? How do you protect that data? Are you in a regulated industry like finance or health care, where the manner in which you have to safeguard that data is mandated by federal regulations? If so, how does that affect your data management and access strategies?

And how is data accessed in your organization? Do you use collaboration platforms such as SharePoint? Tell us about some of the unique and innovative ways you’re using SharePoint to increase productivity and data sharing across your enterprise.

Whenever you have a comment about the content on TechNet Magazine, please let us know. Send us your feedback. Sign up for our LinkedIn group, send us an e-mail at tnmag.microsoft.com or e-mail me directly. We want to hear from you, and hear about what you’re doing with your IT organization and how it’s working.

Lafe Low is the editor in chief of TechNet Magazine*. A veteran technology journalist, he’s also the former executive editor of 1105 Media’s* Redmond magazine. Contact him at llow@1105med.