AI Opportunities Action Plan

The AI Opportunities Action Plan presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology in January 2025 outlines the UK's strategy to harness the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) for economic growth, public service improvement, and personal opportunities. ​

The key goals for AI adoption in the UK, as outlined in the AI Opportunities Action Plan, are:

1. Economic Growth: Drive economic growth by leveraging AI to boost productivity and innovation across various sectors. ​
2. Public Service Improvement: Enhance public services by integrating AI to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and citizen experiences. ​
3. Personal Opportunities: Increase personal opportunities by using AI to improve healthcare, education, and how citizens interact with the government. ​
4. AI Infrastructure: Build sufficient, secure, and sustainable AI infrastructure to support AI development and deployment. ​
5. Data Utilization: Unlock and responsibly use public and private data assets to fuel AI innovation. ​
6. Talent Development: Train, retain, and attract the next generation of AI scientists and founders, ensuring a diverse and skilled workforce. ​
7. Safe and Trusted AI: Enable safe and trusted AI development and adoption through effective regulation, safety, and assurance measures. ​
8. Public-Private Collaboration: Foster collaboration between the public and private sectors to reinforce AI adoption and innovation. ​
9. National Champions: Develop national champions in frontier AI capabilities to ensure the UK benefits economically and strategically from AI advancements. ​

These goals aim to position the UK as a global leader in AI, driving economic growth, improving public services, and enhancing the quality of life for its citizens. 

Read the AI Opportunities Action Plan

Microsoft MVPs and Regional RDs wall 2024

I am really excited to be on the Microsoft MVPs and Regional RDs wall at Microsoft Ignite.

There are lots of amazing announcements this year for Microsoft Fabric, SQL Server, AI Copilot and Microsoft Purview to name but a few. The Microsoft Ignite 2024 Book of News is full of innovations to enable businesses to be AI Ready

Data Toboggan Winter Edition 2025

We are excited to announce that the winter edition, our main Data Toboggan conference,  has Call for Speakers open. This will be our 5th year so will be really exciting for us to reach that milestone.

This is our multi-track 12 hours conference to cover a many time zones.  Help us make this a really special event. 

CfS: https://bit.ly/DT2025-cfs

Event Date: Saturday 25 January 2025  

If you  want to watch recordings from our summer conference or others,  Data Toboggan Cool Runnings 2024 now has 68 videos on You Tube

Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKp6nE2AuD_PNDt9onJGMlZxOOi8y-mPV

 

PASS 24 Data Community Summit

This week it is PASS 24 Data Community Summit

The Microsoft Keynote was entitled, Fuel AI innovation with Azure Databases.

The session abstract: Data is the fuel for innovation, driving the development of transformative AI applications. In this keynote, join Shireesh and the Microsoft engineering team as they explore harnessing the power of data across the Azure databases portfolio to drive ground breaking advancements. Take your first step on the journey with vector search, multi-agent apps and more and learn to unlock new patterns like retrieval augmented generation (RAG).  Explore the latest database innovations in SQL Server, Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure Database for MySQL that enhance operational efficiency, deliver personalized user experiences, and revolutionize the way we interact with technology. 

There were some great announcements 

Announcing

• SSMS 21 and Copilot in SSMS
• Azure SQL Database Hyperscale enhancements (Storage up to 128TB (GA) Log throughput rate up to 150 MB per second (Preview) , Continuous priming (Preview))

Preview

• Next gen general purpose on Azure SQL Managed Instance (32TB of storage, 500 DBs, Lower storage latency, improved storage importance, customisable I/O performance)
• Migration Assessment from SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc
• Mirroring in Fabric for Azure SQL Database and Azure Cosmos DB
• In-database embedding generation
• Vector Indexing and search in Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL
• Native vector type and functions in Azure SQL Database (Available now)
• DiskANN indexing in Azure Database for PostgreSQL

Generally available

• Bi-directional disaster recovery with link feature in Azure SQL Managed Instance
• Flat and quantized flat vector indexes in Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL
• Serverless auto-pause delay to 15 min
• Azure AI extension
• Hyperscale elastic pools
• Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB enhancements

Data Toboggan Alpine Coaster 2024

Alpine Coaster is our shorter 3 time zone end of year unconference event. You know we like to mix things up with this version of Data Toboggan, so this time:

Sessions are around 20 minutes long.

There are three session editions to join. APAC 7:30 8:40 | EMEA 12:30 - 1:40 | AMER 5:30 - 6:10 GMT, join one or all

Please note, there will be no recordings taken on the day. We feel that kinda takes the pressure off a little for this short session more interactive type of event.

Register now for the Alpine Coaster event: Friday 8 November 2024

APAC Edition - https://www.meetup.com/data-toboggan/events/304285946/

EMEA Edition - https://www.meetup.com/data-toboggan/events/304285953/

AMER Edition - https://www.meetup.com/data-toboggan/events/304285956/

Microsoft Purview Data Catalog billing needs consent

There are changes to Microsoft Purview Data Catalog billing beyond 1 November 2024. 

NOTE: The new pricing model for Microsoft Purview Data Governance now goes into effect on January 6, 2025.

The article on Microsoft Purview Data Catalog billing consent explains the new pricing model for Microsoft Purview Data Governance. Users who have been using the data catalog for free will need to consent to the new pay-as-you-go billing model to continue using the service beyond this date. The consent process involves accepting the terms and conditions through a pop-up in the Microsoft Purview portal.

If the necessary consent is not provided by the Entra Global Admin, data governance concepts created in the unified portal will be retained for 120 days. The roles required to provide consent include the Microsoft Entra Global administrator or the Microsoft Entra Compliance administrator role, along with the DataMap curator role.

Read more about it here

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/purview-portal-billing-consent

Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention policies have been extended to Fabric lakehouses

Microsoft Purview's Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies have been extended to Fabric lakehouses and are now in public preview. This extension follows the success of DLP for Power BI and the general availability of Microsoft Fabric last year1. DLP policies help automatically detect sensitive information as it is uploaded into lakehouses and take risk remediation actions to comply with regulations like GDPR and HIPAA. Compliance and Security administrators will receive audit logs for every detection and can set up alerts for sensitive information found in their Fabric lakehouses. There will be no charge for lakehouses scanned by DLP policies during the preview period.

You can read more here