I didn't see Sergey call it an interim release. He said based on the R2 name it didn't seem like Microsoft considers it a revolutionary advance.

Mike, just a follow-up, any evaluation based solely on the name is pretty silly.

Just like VFP developers in general were advised years ago to start learning .NET, I think most SQL developers would be wise to get up to speed with BI (either through self-education, or training programs, etc.)