Microsoft Build 2023 - the era of AI

The keynote shared some amazing technological advances that will change how analytics will work in the future. For me, the biggest change that had to happen, with the ever growing data volumes is the move to one copy of the data. Moving an ever growing volume of data at some point would become impossible, so really excited with todays announcements.

Satya Nadella talked on 5 of the 50+ announcements

• Bringing Bing to ChatGPT
• Copilot extensibility and plugins (to augment AI systems to access APIs, retrieve useful information, perform new computations and safely act on the user’s behalf)
• Azure AI Studio
• Azure AI Safety (Testing, Provenance, Deployment)
• Microsoft Fabric

 Microsoft Fabric, unifying for the era of AI

 

Microsoft Fabric - data analytics for the era of AI

This has four main elements

• Complete Analytics Platform (everything, unified, SaaS, Secured and governed)
• Lake Centric and Open (OneLake, One Copy, Open at every tier)
• Empower Every Business User (Familiar and intuitive, Built into Microsoft 365, Insight to action)
• AI Powered ( Copilot accelerated, GPT on your data, AI-driven insights)

It is one lake , one copy and one security model. This is a massive paradigm shift enabled by AI advancement and will enable competitive advantage. As we all know AI is only as good as your data. This is a SSAS product with frictionless onboarding, instance provisioning with centralized administration. That having tenant-wide governance, centralized security management with built in compliance. There are persona optimized experiences. It is built on open formats, no longer proprietary.

 

There is real separation of compute and storage with one copy for all computers with universal security.  The next level is having shortcuts to the relevant data to enable ease of access. 

The era of the Copilot is here. Reimagining software development with AI. This consideres user experience, application architecture and safety and security.

In summary

Microsoft Fabric Launch Event | May 24-25

Live digital event https://aka.ms/BuildWithAnalytics

Microsoft Build 2023 Book of News provides a roadmap to all the announcements

Introducing Microsoft Fabric: Data analytics for the era of AI

The Fabric Community  

Administration, Security and Governance in Microsoft Fabric

Microsoft Fabric documentation

Introducing Microsoft Fabric

Microsoft Ignite 2022

The Microsoft Ignite 2022 keynote on 12 October shared many innovations and there were lots of announcements. The Microsoft Book of News October 12 - 14, 2022  details these  https://news.microsoft.com/ignite-2022-book-of-news/

Satya talked about the digital imperative and the world's computer - Azure. The main 5 themes are to do more with less.

The technology world is changing rapidly and Satya mentioned that Gartner predicts that by 2025, 70 % of applications will be made by no code/low code tools, up from 25% in 2020. enabling hand drawn forms for example to be converted into apps with  AI

Microsoft and Databricks deepen partnership for modern, cloud-native analytics

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-data-blog/microsoft-and-databricks-deepen-partnership-for-modern-cloud/ba-p/3640280  

Microsoft and Databricks have partnered to build a foundation in the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform by integrating their hallmark capabilities to create an integrated solution for our customers.

Distributed PostgreSQL comes to Azure Cosmos DB

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cosmosdb/distributed-postgresql-comes-to-azure-cosmos-db/

Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL, a new Generally Available service to build cloud-native relational applications. Azure now offers its own single database service that supports both relational and NoSQL workloads. You can build cloud-native applications for relational and non-relational data using Cosmos DB.

Introducing the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform Partner Ecosystem

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-data-blog/introducing-the-microsoft-intelligent-data-platform-partner/ba-p/3640279

There was a launch of a powerful new Partner Ecosystem for the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform deliver category-leading and cloud-native data and AI solutions integrated with the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform to complement capabilities to address diverse scenarios.

Data Governance

Data Governance was mentioned at every single opportunity in many sessions. Data Governance looking at security and compliance, data management and responsible democratisation.  Announcements were Microsoft Purview Business workflows (GA), Business metamodel (Preview), Improved root cause analysis and traceability with SQL Dynamic lineage 

More details in the book of news shares:

• Improved root cause analysis and traceability with SQL Dynamic lineage (now generally available) and fine-grained lineage (in preview) on Power BI datasets. You can do thorough root cause analysis from a single location in Microsoft Purview.
• Metamodels that will enable customers to define organization, departments, data domains and business processes on their technical data. This feature is in preview.
• then the Machine learning-based classifications will make detection of human names and addresses simple and scalable in user data. This feature is in preview.

These features with help with big data management, adding context on top of  data, improved classification with AI, manual process lineage and scorecard insights.  You can read about it below

Add business context to your hybrid data estate with Microsoft Purview

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/security-compliance-and-identity/add-business-context-to-your-hybrid-data-estate-with-microsoft/ba-p/3651989

Customize retention and deletion to help meet your specific business requirements

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/security-compliance-and-identity/customize-retention-and-deletion-to-help-meet-your-specific/ba-p/3613111

Read the article to learn more about the announcements in the Data Lifecycle and Records Management space that help organizations manage the lifecycle of data.

What's New in Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/security-compliance-and-identity/what-s-new-in-microsoft-purview-compliance-manager/ba-p/3643375

Compliance manager helps

• Eliminating blind spots with the right set of security, compliance, and privacy controls
• Safeguarding critical data from external and internal threats
• Identifying risks and addressing regulatory compliance requirements

There has been additional automated controls for Microsoft Priva and App Governance announced.

Power BI

Power BI updates Do more with enterprise self-service business intelligence  https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-ignite-2022-do-more-with-enterprise-self-service-business-intelligence/ 

with video summary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxGVcFb-zv0&t=28s

Drive a data culture to power a new class of data first applications

The PASS Data Community summit session keynote contained a section presented by Arun Ulag, Corporate Vice President of the Intelligence Platform at Microsoft.

From data to intelligence for everyone and for every decision at any scale. He talked about data integration, analytics and business intelligence. The 3 messages were:

Empower every individual with AI capabilities such as the automatic report insights in Power BI with descriptive and diagnostic insights and insights on the move. 

Empower every team with Power BI and Teams, your data is where you chat. Power BI have goals that include being driven by data, built for teams, AI powered and automated action.

The third message was empower every organisation with a complete analytics fabric, Power BI + Synapse.

The public preview of Hybrid Tables automatic aggregations was announced.. 

Observation data is the fasted growing data segment with 175ZB of data expected by 2025 and 50 billion connected devices by 2030.

Also Azure Synapse Data Explorer was announced as now in public preview.

Introduction of Power BI

More and more people are using Power BI in their everyday roles. Understanding the different deployment types and basics of the product helps with the adoption of self service data and digital migration. Not every organization has the appetite or capability to use Power BI in the cloud.  The cloud and on premises capabilities do have some differences but it is a great place to engage with dashboards and paginated reports.  The presentations I have given covered these areas.  

Planning a PowerBI Enterprise Deployment

There is an updated version of the Planning a Power BI Enterprise Deployment whitepaper. Deploying Power BI in a large enterprise is a complex task that requires a lot of thought and planning.

The paper includes these areas for consideration.

Section 1: Introduction Section 2: Power BI Usage Scenarios Section 3: Power BI Architectural Choices Section 4: Power BI Licensing and User Management Section 5: Power BI Source Data Considerations Section 6: Power BI Dataset Storage Options Section 7: Power BI Data Refresh and Data Gateway Section 8: Power BI Dataset and Report Development Considerations Section 9: Power BI Collaboration, Sharing and Distribution Section 10: Power BI Administration Section 11: Power BI Security and Data Protection Section 12: Power BI Deprecated Items Section 13: Support, Learning, and Third-Party Tools

There is a summary of some of the changes at https://coatesdatastrategies.com/blog/updated-whitepaper-planning-a-power-bi-enterprise-deployment

Microsoft Business Applications Summit 2020 Excitement

Microsoft Business Applications Summit took place online this year 6-7 May 2020 for free. New features were shared and the sessions discussed how to optimize operational processes. I was particularly interested in Power BI. There was an emphasis on Data Culture for every decision. The new features are intelligent and familiar, meet the needs of business and IT, in a unified way, and are ubiquitous, for everyone to have access. Trust is the foundation with BI for collaborative teamwork and BI being woven into the fabric of the organization.

There are some amazing AI features with the natural language smart narratives, being able to suggest questions in Q and A and there is trend analysis automatically generated over points.

The data stack for Power BI collects query patterns and determines materialized views for optional performance. Microsoft Information Protection in Power BI is GA. For admin and governance you can bring you own log analytics. Deployment pipelines are coming as part of the application lifecycle management.

Lineage view and dataset impact analysis are two useful additions to the toolset.  Lineage view recently became generally available. Lineage view enables you to visualize the entire data journey from a given workspace, making it easy to determine the upstream and downstream dependencies of artifacts, examine artifact information, and take action. Dataset impact analysis enables a dataset owner to understand how a dataset is being used within the workspace and in other workspaces. With the dataset impact analysis, it is possible to determine if a dataset is being used in mulitple workspaces, so the impact of changes can be reduced.

There will be templates to help people start with Power BI like other Microsoft products. There were so many other new feature announced. You can watch the sessions from the day on-demand.

Microsoft Business Applications Summit

The Microsoft Business Applications Summit is now a digital event on May 6, 2020. Microsoft say get ready for the new digital event experience, with opportunities to hear from Microsoft executives, learn from experts, and connect with your community. Register today, at no cost to you!

The event will let you learn about the latest innovations and what is coming next in tools. Discover how Microsoft business applications work together to unify data to gain in-the-moment intelligence. In addition learn and explore the new capabilities across the Microsoft Power Platform.

Lineage Power BI

The lineage view was announced at the Business Applications Summit. It is coming to the Power BI service so you can soon trace all your data from source to report.

Microsoft Business Application Summit

It is the Microsoft Business Application Summit in at Atlanta, Georgia 10-11 June 2019 and there was a raft of new features launched yesterday for Power BI relating to AI and Enterprise features. The notes of the key features are below:

New AI and Enterprise features for Power BI are covered in depth

What’s new and planned for business intelligence future release dates are shared

Microsoft Power BI: The future of modern BI - roadmap and vision video

Watch on-demand sessions from the event

June release of Power BI Desk. This incorporates some exciting Q & A changes.

Power Platform World Tour

Power Platform User Groups will deliver the Power Platform World Tour. It will be in London on 28-29 August, with unprecedented access to premium Power BI, PowerApps and Flow content designed by your local industry experts.