Microsoft Ignite 2023 – What’s in for us as data professionals?

This week is Microsoft Ignite 2023 week and today was time for the keynote sessions and some major announcements.
You can read more about all the news in the official Microsoft Ignite 2023 Book of News.

Microsoft Fabric is general available (GA)

Since the public preview announcement of Microsoft Fabric at Build 2023, many enhancement have been added and feedback from public preview users had been incorporated. At Ignite 2023, the general availability (GA) of Fabric was announced. If you have not watched it live (or live-streamed), the data keynote with Amir, Arun and many others is a must watch

• Prepare your data for AI innovation with Microsoft Fabric – now generally available (by Arun) https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-fabric/blog/2023/11/15/prepare-your-data-for-ai-innovation-with-microsoft-fabric-now-generally-available/

• Empower Power BI users with Microsoft Fabric and Copilot: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/empower-power-bi-users-with-microsoft-fabric-and-copilot/

• Fabric workloads are now generally available – https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/fabric-workloads-are-now-generally-available/

In the course of the Fabric GA announcements, several other features have been mentioned:

• OneLake shortcuts to Amazon S3 are GA
• Azure Data Lake Storage Gen shortcuts are GA
• Integrate your Microsoft 365 data into Fabric (native OneLake integration)
• Connect Dataverse data with Fabric – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/maker/data-platform/azure-synapse-link-view-in-fabric

• Introducing Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric – https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-US/blog/introducing-mirroring-in-microsoft-fabric/
• Overview of Copilot for Fabric (preview) – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/get-started/copilot-fabric-overview

• There are “some” more Fabric / Power BI updates for November 2023 listed here: https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-fabric-november-2023-update/

• Azure AI Studio and Microsoft Fabric Integration – https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ai-ai-platform-blog/driving-ai-innovation-across-digital-landscapes-azure-ai-and/ba-p/3978686

• Are you using Synapse Analytics, then – “Microsoft Fabric, explained for existing Synapse users” is the right thing to read – https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-fabric-explained-for-existing-synapse-users/
• Get your certification for #MicrosoftFabric– starting in Jan 2024 -> DP-600:

Copilot (s)

• Copilot comes to Microsoft Fabric (preview) – use Copilot to create dataflows / data pipelines, generate code, build machine learning models or visualizations in Power BI.
• Microsoft Copilot Studio – create and customize copilots using natural language or a grapical interface – https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2023/11/15/announcing-microsoft-copilot-studio-customize-copilot-for-microsoft-365-and-build-your-own-standalone-copilots/
• Copilot in Power Automate – enhancements

Azure AI Services

• Azure Machine Learning updates and enhancements: prompt flow (GA), model catalog, OneLake as a datastore in Azure Machine Learning (preview)
• Azure AI Studio as a unified AI platform
• Azure AI Vision updates
• New multimodal AI capabilities in Azure OpenAI Services (DALL-E3, GPT-3.5 Turbo, GPT-4 Turbo, GPT-4 Turbo with Vision [GPT-4V], ..)
• Azure Open AI – video insights (Video-to-text summary, content search)

• Azure Kubernetes Service offers capabilities for AI and machine learning workloads

Data Services @ Azure

• Run SAP HANA on Azure with new infrastructure options (Azure M-Series Mv3, scale up to 32 TB)
• Confidential Computing – Azure Kubernetes Services with Confidential containers in preview
• New confidential virtual machine option for Azure Databricks
• Azure Cosmos DB – dynamic scaling per partition/region; Microsoft Copilot for Azure Integration, Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB vCore (link 1, link2)
• Oracle Database @ Azure – starting in US East region, Oracle database services will be available in Azure

Azure SQL Managed Instance

• A summary of Azure SQL Managed Instance product updates in 2023: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-sql-blog/a-summary-of-azure-sql-managed-instance-product-updates-in-2023/ba-p/3983014

Azure SQL / SQL Server enabled for Azure Arc / Azure Database for MySQL, PostgreSQL

• Lower pricing for Azure SQL Database Hyperscale compute
• Azure SQL Managed Instance free trial offer – free of charge testing for 12 months (4 vCores – limited to 720 hours/months; 64 GB of storage)
• SQL Server enabled for Azure Arc – security features (monitoring enabled for Azure Arc, enhanced HA/DR management, security updates)
• Azure Database for MySQL Business Critital – perf enhancements
• Azure Database for PostgreSQL – performance enhancements, leverage LLMs models (calling into Azure Open AI, Azure AI language)

(Azure) IoT – Internet of Things

• Azure IoT Operations – unified end-to-end solution for IoT applications (single management plane, app development, cloud-to-edge data plane and a common infrastructure).
• MQTT broker feature for Azure Event Grid