Microsoft unveils new features for fabric to strengthen cloud data platform

Washington: As per reports, Microsoft is working to enhance its cloud-based Fabric platform, aiming to attract enterprises with new features previewed at the first annual European Microsoft Fabric Community Conference. Released in May 2023, Fabric integrates data warehousing, data engineering, data analytics, and more into a single platform, which Microsoft hopes will simplify IT operations and reduce costs for businesses.

Fabric consists of six key "workloads"—Data Factory, Data Engineering, Data Warehouse, Data Science, Real-Time Intelligence, and Power BI. The new features announced last week are designed to improve the platform's AI capabilities, data integration across multiple clouds, and its ability to provide real-time insights through Microsoft 365 apps. Microsoft is positioning these enhancements to compete more effectively with rivals such as Snowflake, Databricks, AWS, Google, and Oracle.

Key updates include enhancements to Data Factory and Data Engineering, such as a faster Spark execution engine and simplified data ingestion processes with the new Copy job feature, which supports large-scale data transfers without the need for complex pipelines. Additionally, Real-Time Intelligence gains new eventstream connectors and improvements to its Copilot AI feature, allowing users to refine queries using natural language.

In Power BI, Microsoft has introduced "Metric sets," which allow users to share standardised metrics across an organisation, and "organisational apps," enabling secure distribution of reports within enterprises.

Microsoft is also expanding Fabric's integration with OneLake, its unified data lake, allowing users to connect to data from Google Cloud Services and Amazon S3. Integration with Azure Databricks is now in preview, making it easier to access Databricks Unity Catalog tables from OneLake in near real-time.

While Fabric is still in its early stages, with some features in preview, Microsoft continues to expand its functionality. By adding tools that simplify data migration, improve analytics, and integrate AI-powered insights, Microsoft aims to convince more enterprises to adopt Fabric as their primary data platform.