Microsoft has unveiled an update to its unified data analytics platform, Microsoft Fabric, during the Build 2024 conference. The latest enhancement, termed Real-Time Intelligence, is designed to allow organizations to efficiently ingest, analyze, and act upon real-time data streams.
The Real-Time Intelligence module marks a significant advancement in enterprise data management. It enables immediate insights across data environments, aiding in more informed decision-making. This functionality can identify idling equipment or detect failures in transaction processes.
Arun Ulagaratchagan, Corporate Vice President for Azure Data at Microsoft, highlights the update's role in providing teams with “up-to-the-minute” insights, enhancing their decision-making capabilities in a rapidly changing business environment. He notes that this end-to-end experience allows for the handling of real-time data without the need for it to land before processing.
Integration and Efficiency
The integration of Real-Time Analytics and Data Activator into the new Real-Time Intelligence workload boosts the platform's efficiency. Users can leverage out-of-the-box connectors to ingest streaming data from various Microsoft and third-party sources. Through either a low-code or code-rich experience, users can transform these data streams, conduct instant inquiries for immediate visual insights, and initiate actions based on specified events.
Microsoft has begun trials of Real-Time Intelligence with several companies, aiming to support critical applications such as optimizing transportation routes, monitoring energy grids, conducting predictive maintenance, and managing retail inventories.
Fabric, launched in May of last year, consolidates Microsoft's existing data warehousing, business intelligence, and data analytics products into a single offering. This integration helps enterprises combine workloads while reducing IT integration overhead, complexity, and costs. The Fabric modules include Data Factory, Synapse Data Engineering, Synapse Data Science, Synapse Data Warehouse, Synapse Real-Time Analytics, Power BI, and Data Activator—all built on the company's data lake offering, OneLake.
Real-Time Hub and User Data Functions
The new module is supported by the Real-Time Hub, a tool for discovering, managing, and using event streaming data from Fabric and other sources. From the Real-Time Hub, users can gain insights through the data profile, configure the right level of endorsement, set alerts on changing conditions, and more, all without leaving the hub.
User data functions for developers are built for Microsoft Fabric experiences across all data services, such as notebooks, pipelines, and event streams. These functions help developers build applications easily using varied data sources, such as lakehouses, data warehouses, and mirrored databases, utilizing native code ability and custom logic.
In addition to Real-Time Intelligence, Microsoft is preparing to introduce a Fabric workload development kit, currently in preview. This kit will allow developers to create and deploy applications as native workloads within Fabric, enhancing the platform's versatility and applicability across different sectors.
Expansions in OneLake Connectivity and Copilot in Power BI
Microsoft has also announced expansions in OneLake's connectivity and the general availability of Copilot in the Power BI module. The Copilot inside the Power BI experience can generate reports and summarize them. Moreover, Copilots in other Fabric experiences can create data flows, generate code, and build machine learning models using natural language.
Future support for Apache Iceberg in Fabric OneLake and bi-directional data access between Snowflake and Fabric has been announced. This integration will enable users to analyze their Fabric and Snowflake data in any engine within either platform, and access data across apps like Microsoft 365, Power Platform, and Azure AI Studio.
