Microsoft Introduces Fabric, A New Data & Analytics Platform

Microsoft introduced its new end-to-end data encryption and analytics platform, Fabric, in Build 2023. Bringing together popular technologies such as Azure Synapse Analytics, Power BI, and Azure Data Factory, the tech giant aims to help businesses and professionals get the most out of their data.

If successfully executed, this new platform can be a life-changing milestone for the future of AI in business.

What Makes Microsoft Fabric Different?

The first thing that gives Microsoft Fabric an edge over other data analytics platforms is its infusion of AI power at every step. Integrating the platform with Microsoft Azure Open AI service, businesses will have the option to use conversational language to create codes, functions, data pipelines, and flows.

Users will also have the option to create their own conversational language experiences.

It'll also help centralize the workflow for ardent Microsoft fans by integrating with the most popular Microsoft 365 apps (the names of which are yet to be revealed).

In the near future, you might also have the option to extract data directly from Google Cloud to your Fabric account.

Furthermore, this platform will double up as a powerhouse of data, pulling information from Microsoft's OneLake data lake and Amazon S3.

Integration with OneLake ensures that every piece of data and information directly syncs with it and is automatically indexed, making searching, sharing, and maintenance fairly easy.

The biggest benefit of switching to Microsoft Fabric is that it can reduce operations costs.

When companies manage multiple platforms together, they stack up bills in subscription fees. A lot of money flows in unnoticed, and that's exactly what Fabric wishes to eliminate.

This wastage is something that Fabric addresses because it creates a unified compute model.Arun Ulag, Microsoft's corporate VP for Azure Data

By simply purchasing a single pool of computing, they can power all Fabric Workloads. All the computing is virtual and serverless in Fabric. This means customers can reuse the capacity they purchased again and again.

Where It All Started?

Pointing out the need for a centralized data analytics platform, Ulag stated that while the last decade has been blessed with tremendous innovation in every field, it hasn't been quite helpful for data stack.

If anything, the modern data stack has been systematically fragmented over the years. Customers are evidently tired of paying integration tax.

That's when Microsoft came up with the idea of creating a unified computer infrastructure and a single data lake.

The first round of user interaction took place last year when Ulag personally gave a demo of the platform to 100 Fortune 500 companies, and pretty much all of them were excited about the prospect of including Fabric in their team.

As of now, Fabric is in public preview.

What's interesting is that Microsoft has made it available to everyone who wants a test run without requesting their credit card information. Speaking of Power BI tenants, it's expected that the platform will be enabled for them starting July 1.

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