Microsoft has penetrated in banking sector and joined hands with the largest core banking software called Temenos, and tested its availability on SQL Server 2008 R2 so now you can run core banking software on SQL Server. Microsoft has tested theT24 environment with windows server with SQL Server 2008 R2 and done successfully this testing using 25 million accounts with 15 million customers over 2000 branches.
Microsoft team test results:
Task Average SQL-T24
Funds transfers 500,000 697,920
Security trades 240,000 323,534
Journey Through No-Where 
excellent news, gr8