I had been to the SQL server 2005 launch event this morning. Bad weather, but I was keen to know what they had done in terms of avalibility. And to be honest while some of it was techno marketing, there where three things that I reallly thing were good:
High Avalability, and concurrent recovery.
Security, to the database and feature to encrypt data in the database (like CC no etc).
Improved user interface to the way one can interact with SQL, no more coding in MMC
Thanks to the hacker, they have really paid a lot of attention to security.