How realtime do the reports have to be? Offloading the reporting to another (Standard Ed.) server, with automated nightly restores, or perhaps log-shipping with readable secondaries, might be a much less expensive/risky option. The problems you're having are solvable with 2008R2 technology, I'd say...not to dissuade you from an upgrade project but there's an awful lot of work/expense/complexity/risk with version upgrade projects. You also can consider things like isolation levels but I'm no expert in those and they can both solve and create problems, so caveat emptor!