• Build intelligent and mission-critical apps for OLTP with a breakthrough in performance, scalability, and availability.
• Microsoft SQL Server 2016 allows you to protect data both in motion and at rest. It is one of the least vulnerable databases in the NIST vulnerability databases.
• Transform your data into actionable insights by delivering insights on any device.
• Use R, the most popular statistical language to analyze data directly within the SQL databases without moving the data. 
• Microsoft SQL Server 2016 now includes various options for faster queries. The memory-optimized tables currently support faster OLTP workloads with a better throughput due to new Parallelize operations. 
• The analysis service now supports two different modes for faster reporting; tabular and multidimensional. Using the DirectQuery feature generates better and simpler queries than the earlier versions. 
• Introduces three principal security features; Row Level Security, Always Encrypted, and Dynamic Data Masking. Due to the innovative client-side encryption, the SQL server Instance never sees the unencrypted version of the data.
• Use Row-Level security to configure tables that users can see. The feature limits in which rows are returned to a user regardless of the application they using by automatically applying a predicate to the query. 
• Use Dynamic Data Masking to obfuscate sensitive data portion and specifically allow users to view the unmasked data.
• SQL Server 2016 Supports temporal tables, which is a new Standard in ANSI SQL 2011. You can use Transact-SQL to create and query tables relative to a specific point in time.
• With the addition of JSON to SQL Server 2016, you can now support both relational and non-relational data structures and choose the right model for your data workloads and requirements. 
• With SQL Server 2016, it’s possible to use PolyBase to query data in Azure Blob Storage and Hadoop by combining the results with relational data stored in the SQL server.
• Improved Azure SQL databases and better reporting by supporting two new data visualization and improved parameter layout options.

For small businesses, freelancers, and the self-employed working with large amounts of data is always difficult. Unlike large corporations that have dedicated data server farms and data specialists on the payroll, smaller operations have always struggled to fully utilise the power of data.