Highlights from Microsoft Ignite 2023
Another Microsoft Ignite is officially in the books, and what an exciting time it was for data and analytics. A big thank you to all the attendees, speakers, and behind-the-scenes production teams that made Ignite 2023 one to remember. There were tons of new announcements and demos covered throughout the event, so I’ve pulled out some of my personal highlights to share in a conference recap.
Microsoft Fabric is now generally available!
Earlier this year at Build, we announced the preview of our new, unified software as a service (SaaS) analytics solution—Microsoft Fabric. Since its launch, the response from our customers and partners has been overwhelmingly positive and we were excited to announce general availability at Ignite 2023. Fabric is completely reshaping how our customers work with data by bringing every data team together on a single, AI-powered platform.
You can learn more about Fabric and start your free 60-day trial by visiting the getting started homepage.
Copilot in Fabric
Another exciting announcement during Ignite was the preview launch of Copilot in Fabric, starting with the Power BI, Data Factory, Data Engineering, and Data Science experiences. Copilot in Microsoft Fabric enables you to use natural language to create dataflows and pipelines, write SQL statements, build reports, or even develop machine learning models. The preview will be rolling out in stages, with the goal that customers with Fabric capacity (F64 or higher) or Power BI Premium capacity (P1 or higher) have access to the Copilot preview by the end of March 2024. Access will be immediately available when it’s enabled in your tenant. Check out our Fabric documentation for a complete overview of Copilot for Fabric.
Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric
One of the Ignite announcements I am most excited about is the introduction of Mirroring in Fabric. This new capability will enable Fabric users to effortlessly access and ingest data from any database or data warehouse into the Data Warehousing experience in Microsoft Fabric in near real-time.
To learn more about the launch dates and capabilities of Mirroring in Fabric, read Priya’s blog post. To participate in the early adopter program, submit your application today.
Enhanced governance with Microsoft Purview
As part of the preview launch of Microsoft Fabric, we announced a library of governance and security features that would enable increased visibility, insights, and flexibility in managing your data securely. At Ignite, we announced the expansion of these security and governance features with the integration of Microsoft Purview into Fabric. With this integration, you now have greater control in managing your entire data estate in a fully secure and compliant way. To find out more about Fabric’s new governance and security capabilities, read the Fabric GA announcement blog.
What are our customers and partners saying about Fabric?
It’s one thing for me to talk about how awesome the general availability launch of Microsoft Fabric is, but here’s what a couple of our customers and partners had to share:
“Previewing Fabric was a great opportunity to explore features right at the beginning and to think about how we could adopt them in our organization. We soon realized it was the natural evolution for us in our data mesh journey as it provided a complete analytics service in a single offering.”—Carl-Johan Nakamura, Chief Data Officer, ZEISS Group
“At Accenture and Avanade, we are ready to securely unify data, analytics, and AI for our clients with Microsoft Fabric. We have launched the Microsoft Fabric University that already has trained 3,000 data professionals to be fluent in Fabric, and we are taking lessons learned from building our own operations on Fabric to accelerate AI opportunities with our clients across the globe.”—Simon Thomas, Data and AI Global Lead for Avanade
Live from the conference
Microsoft Ignite 2023
Discover moreHere are just a few of my favorite moments from Ignite:
Catch up on any content you missed at Ignite
The session recordings are now available on-demand for any of the sessions you missed during the conference. With so many great speakers and sessions, it was hard to attend everything in real-time, but not to worry, you can now catch up with our recorded sessions. Speakers include Arun Ulag, Jessica Hawk, Amir Netz, Priya Sathy, Justyna Lucznik, and many more, so there’s lots to choose from. To watch Microsoft Fabric-focused sessions, use this pre-filtered search link, where you can browse the Fabric sessions available on demand.
Continue your Fabric learning experience
Build on the momentum from Ignite and continue your learning journey with Fabric by watching our hot-off-the-press December webinar, Democratize Analytics Insights. You’ll learn how Fabric users can employ self-service capabilities to reduce barriers and time in accessing and sharing actionable insights and reports.
I’m also thrilled to invite you to our very first Microsoft Fabric Community Conference taking place in Las Vegas, March 26-28, 2024. Over the course of three days, our featured speakers will guide you through how you can unify your data landscape with Microsoft Fabric and unlock generative AI innovation through Azure AI. We hope to see you there!
The conference will also be a great place to catch up on all the latest developments with Fabric—because we aren’t slowing down! New capabilities are rolling out every week, documented in our monthly updates, and our roadmap is publicly available so you can see what’s coming next.
For more information on the latest developments in Microsoft Fabric and announcements from Ignite, visit the Microsoft Fabric website and read Arun’s recent Ignite blog post.
