The eighth edition of the AI Index report is out. The 2025 Index is the most comprehensive to date as AI’s influence across society, the economy, and global governance continues to intensify
In the report it covers
The Microsoft AI Skills Fest is starting from 8 April 2025 to 28 May 2025 to enhance your AI skills and unlock the future. From experiential content to hackathons, there is a lot of opportunity to learn at all levels.
Register today: https://msft.it/6042qSzcE
There were lots of announcements during the FabCon 2025 conference. Here are a few to catch up on. The main Microsoft blog post can be read here: Fueling tomorrow’s AI with new agentic capabilities and security innovations in Fabric
Fabric Data Factory
Fabric Data Factory enables data ingestion through applying data transformations, and orchestrating different data-related activities for modern data management architectures. There were many new features added such as
Further reading Fabric Data Factory: What’s New and Latest Roadmap
There were also many product improvements and features for Mirroring in Fabric
Mirroring in Fabric – What’s new
Migration Assistant for Fabric Data Warehouse
A really exciting announcement to help migrate from Azure Synapse Analytics was unveiled. This Migration Assistant for Fabric Data Warehouse will soon be in preview! The Migration experience is built natively into Fabric and enables the seamless transition from Azure Synapse Analytics (Data Warehouse) to Microsoft Fabric.
Migration Assistant for Fabric Data Warehouse (Preview)
Copilot for Data Engineering and Data Science
There is a new version of Copilot for Data Engineering and Data Science, a next-generation AI-powered assistant designed to elevate data analysis and coding experience.
Further reading Enhancing AI productivity in Fabric notebooks with Copilot updates
Copilot F2 and above SKUs
This is great news for customers on F2 and above SKUs that they will have access to Copilot, Fabric data agents, and more.
Azure AI Foundry
Organizations can use Azure AI Foundry to connect customized, conversational agents, created in Microsoft Fabric.
Microsoft Purview
There are several new innovations in Microsoft Purview for protected, AI-ready data
1. Enhancing Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) support for lakehouse in Fabric to help prevent sensitive data loss by restricting access
2. Expanding DLP policy support for additional Fabric items such as KQL databases and Mirrored databases to show users notification through policy tips when they are working with sensitive data
3. Microsoft Purview for Copilot in Fabric
4. Data observability, now in preview, within Microsoft Purview Unified Catalog
These are a few of the announcements that were of particular interest to me but there were a lot of announcements showcasing the sheer volume of change and growth of Microsoft Fabric.
I had a great time at MVP Summit this week. I learn a lot of new things. It was great to be able to network, provide customer feedback and talk about the ever evolving Data & AI landscape. With the speed of change seemingly increasing all the time it is good to stop and have a clear week reflecting on things that work and don't work and how to improve our practices when working with data and AI.
I think the biggest take away is that the Data & AI community is always approachable and helpful. There is always someone with deep knowledge of an area who can help and the community just gives up so much time to help others learn and grow from helping children learn coding skills, to creating and running conferences, speaking, mentoring and so much more.
I have been privileged to be a Data Platform MVP for the last 7 years and would like to thank Microsoft for providing an amazing opportunity to attend the conference.
There have been some mind blowing changes released today which will aid the future of work. Microsoft have introduced the first-of-their-kind reasoning agents for work.
Researcher
Researcher helps you tackle complex, multi-step research at
work. This will help delivering insights with greater quality and accuracy.
Analyst
Analyst thinks like a skilled data scientist looking at raw data to produce insights in minutes.
Introducing Researcher and Analyst in Microsoft 365 Copilot
Read more about Researcher and Analyst
Deep reasoning and agent flows
Deep reasoning and agent flows in Microsoft Copilot Studio
is in preview and offers a comprehensive platform to create, manage, and deploy
agents matched to business needs.
Deep reasoning
Deep reasoning, agents can perform complex tasks and make more accurate decisions.
Agent flows
Agent flows bring AI workflows into Copilot Studio that enable agents to follow a predefined sequence of actions, ensuring consistent results for structured tasks.
It is exciting to be able to attend MVP summit 2025 virtually. It was not possible to attend in person, this year, but so glad that it is possible to attend virtually.
Copilot shares its thoughts on the summit.
The MVP Summit is an exclusive event hosted by Microsoft for its Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs). These are individuals recognized for their exceptional contributions to the tech community, such as sharing knowledge, providing feedback, and supporting others in using Microsoft technologies. The summit offers MVPs the chance to connect with Microsoft engineers, attend technical sessions, and collaborate on shaping the future of Microsoft products and services. It's a unique opportunity for networking, learning, and sharing expertise.
The AI Decision Brief Insights from Microsoft provides insights for AI leaders on navigating the Generative AI platform shift. AI has a potential to transform business but the rapid growth of the technology causes challenges in keeping up to date and knowing how to adopt it. As well and the infrastructure required 2 areas that are covered in the report which I this need investing is is AI skills and the importance of AI governance strategies. It is worth reading the guide to understand about the complexities and seeing how real world examples use AI.
The paper shares the five stages of generative AI readiness as
The five drives for business value mentioned are
The top 3 elements to create best practice to get started are to
It is a useful document to read AI Decision Brief Insights from Microsoft
A new global report from MIT Technology Review Insights report looks at how business is leveraging AI customisation. It examines challenges faced by technology, motivations and methods to create business value. The report talks about improving efficiency, user satisfaction, and innovation but also looks at challenges such as data integrity and privacy. Simplifying AI customization is key and Azure AI Foundary , formerly AI Studio, helps design, customise and manage AI apps and agents at scale to help with business opportunities.
The UK Government launched the AI Playbook for 2025 to provide departments and public sector organisations with accessible technical guidance on the safe and effective use of AI.
The playbook covers 10 core principles for AI use in government and public sector organisations. These are
The paper shows the interdependencies between some existing and emerging fields of AI.
The Microsoft Purview Data Governance Roadmap H1 CY2025 has been shared
Purview Data Governance is aligned with the Microsoft Security wide semester planning process. Next roadmap update is expected in July 2025. The roadmap covers these four areas to enhance data governance, improve data quality, and leverage AI in data management.
The Data Toboggan Piste Maps for Saturday 25 January 2025
Register Now: https://bit.ly/DT2025-Register
Agenda: https://bit.ly/DT2025-Agenda
Bramberg Room
Pradaschier Room
Rigi Kaltbad Room
Jack Rowbotham has shared a great set of tool to get Copilot ready for agents . The full set of tools to use can be downloaded here: https://lnkd.in/gpPBSMmf
Continuing our travels with Data Toboggan
History of Events
2021
Inaugural event Winter Edition 2021: January 30, 2021
Cool Runnings July 2021: June 12, 2021
World Synapse Day 2021: Friday, November 12th, 2021
2022
Winter Edition 2022: January 29, 2022
Cool Runnings July 2022: July 9, 2022
Alpine Coaster 2022: Friday, November 25th, 2022
2023
Winter Edition 2023: January 28, 2023
Cool Runnings June 2023: June 24, 2023
Alpine Coaster 2023: Friday, November 24th, 2023
2024
Winter Edition 2024: February 3, 2024
Data Toboggan Slide Preparation @ SQLBits: Thursday 21 March 2024
Cool Runnings 2024: Saturday, July 13th, 2024.
Alpine Coaster 2024: Friday, November 8th, 2024
2025
Winter Edition 2025: Saturday, January 25th, 2025.
Register for our next event: https://bit.ly/DT2025-Register
Agenda: https://bit.ly/DT2025-Agenda
#microsoftfabric #synapseanalytics
The UK Government's response to the AI Opportunities Action Plan outlines a comprehensive strategy to harness the potential of artificial intelligence. Key points relate to AI infrastructure, a national data library, AI skills and talent, regulation and safety and public services. The government plans to expand the UK's AI infrastructure, including a new supercomputing facility and AI Growth Zones to support AI development and job creation. A National Data Library is to be established to provide secure access to public sector data for AI research and innovation. There are initiatives to attract and retain top AI talent, including scholarships and fellowships, and efforts to increase diversity in the AI workforce. The government wants to ensure a robust regulatory framework to support AI innovation while addressing risks and maintaining public trust. In addition to using AI to improve public services, such as healthcare and education, by adopting a 'Scan, Pilot, Scale' approach to AI implementation.
The plan aims to position the UK as a global leader in AI,
driving economic growth and improving the quality of life for its citizens.
You can read the government response to the 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:
Read the AI Opportunities Action Plan
There is now an accelerator to build a Microsoft Fabric modern data platform using pre-built reusable Fabric items. It uses a metadata-based ELT orchestration used for Azure Synapse and Azure Databricks. The medallion architecture enables files in Lakehouse or Data Warehouse in OneLake.
An accelerator has many benefits to accelerate development, makes implementations repeatable and enables best practice. It is ease to use, scalable, flexible, reuseable and everything is automated.
The architecture has
Bronze layer - files
Silver layer - Lakehouse
Gold layer – Data Warehouse
To get started follow these steps:
