What is Microsoft Fabric and Why it is a big deal

“You might have heard the news of the announcement at Microsoft Build by Arun Ulag and the rest of the Microsoft Data and Analytics Platform team. The announcement was about the new service offering named Microsoft Fabric. In this article and video, I want to explain what Fabric is and why you should care. In the end, I will also share my two cents on how I see this offering will come into the Data analytics products and services market.”

Read my article about it here:

https://radacad.com/what-is-microsoft-fabric-and-why-it-is-a-big-deal

The Video discusses Microsoft Fabric, an initiative to simplify the complex landscape of data analytics tools. With more than 30 products just in Microsoft's suite, and over 100 in the wider ecosystem, this complexity can make it difficult for Data Analytics departments to execute successful projects. Microsoft Fabric is intended to address this issue by providing a single umbrella for several key services: Power BI, Azure Data Factory, and Azure Synapse.

Microsoft Fabric integrates various functionalities under one structure: storage with OneLake, data integration with Data Factory, data engineering, data warehousing, data science, real-time analytics with Synapse, business intelligence with Power BI, action platform with Data Activator, and governance with Purview. This unified structure provides a single platform to manage all these services, which simplifies the licensing process and allows users to focus on project outcomes rather than grappling with technology intricacies.

OneLake is the unified data storage solution across all these services. Azure Data Factory and Dataflow handle data integration, while Synapse covers data engineering, warehousing, and real-time analytics. Power BI is used for business intelligence, Data Activator for automated actions based on data, and Purview for governance.

Microsoft Fabric is not just an umbrella for existing services but a concerted effort to integrate them seamlessly for easier user experience. This integration is aimed to redirect the project's focus towards successful analytics projects rather than coordinating multiple services. It is currently available for activation in users' tenant. The author compares this initiative to the successful integration of Power View, Power Query, and Power Pivot under Power BI in 2015.