SQL Server 2008 offers small and mid-sized businesses a wide range of performance enhancements, including: Greater scalability; enhanced utilization of disk space; Policy-Based Management, and improved security and encryption. This means the organization can be more flexible in responding to business events and, over time, can deliver significant improvements in ROI. Companies that have already upgraded are seeing improvements and savings ranging from 20 percent to 60 percent in some areas, and Forrester Consulting points to one customer that broke even on the deployment in just six months. This article explores ways in which small and mid-sized businesses can improve the performance of their databases — and their businesses — by upgrading to SQL Server 2008.