On the First of June, SQL Server 2016 was officially released. While it is still early days to measure the full impact of the release, the one thing that is exceedingly clear is that this is a very successful software release. There have been very few complaints online beyond the standard heard during any upgrade: “This doesn’t work like it used to.” This has to be attributed in part to the fact that SQL Server 2016 has actually been released a lot longer than June 1, 2016. In fact, much of SQL Server 2016 has been in working in a large number of production environments since January of 2015. No, I’m not talking about people on early previews of the product. I’m talking about Azure SQL Database. Microsoft has been rigidly, one could even say ruthlessly, following their approach of Azure-First for SQL Server development for quite a while now. It’s paying off. Microsoft is getting better and better at software releases because they’re releasing new software all the time. The software that gets released is of a higher and higher quality because it’s so thoroughly tested prior to coming out in the boxed product. Further, those of us who work in Azure regularly, are already very familiar with “new” functionality as it finally hits the boxed product (for example, I’ve worked with Query Store for over a year). All of this taken together makes for better and better SQL Server releases. SQL Server 2016 is ready for your production system because it’s already been running in lots of others.