Power Platform | Talking about data

Recently, I got invited by the Power Platform Virtual Happy Hour team around Alison Mulligan and Carl Cookson to talk about data (The question is data yes or no) in context of Power Platform together with Claire Edgson – Group Manager – Power Platform – Europe at Avanade. You can watch the recording on YouTube now, if you couldn´t make it or want to speed-up in context of today´s blog post. As with many topics around the Power Platform, hanging out within our community, clock was ticking fast and an hour felt like a few seconds only.

Well, I thought data deserves a little more time, as we do see low-code citizen developers becoming risk managers of massive data and based on statista over the next five years up to 2025, global data creation is projected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes. Satya Nadella covered the data topic inside his Inspire Keynote 2021 talking about Microsoft Cloud and security offered within. So we better start soon asking ourselves around our data strategy. So to continue the happy hour talk, let´s take a look at some principles that may help us.

First, when it comes to digital innovation there´re two streams or goals to follow. Talking about Intelligent Applications, it is to leave the foundational comfort zone of App migration and App modernization and take it to the innovation zone where strategic value is your main driver for building Smart apps infused with pre-built AI or cloud native Intelligent apps.

Talking about Data Intelligence, it is to leave the foundational zone of Data migration and Data modernization and decrease the effort to enter Advanced analytics or Data intelligence offered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). When all this comes together, Microsoft often times refers to this as Digital Feedback Loop. You could think about it from Empowering employees, Engage with customers, Optimize Operations or Transform products. Any idea around creating an application will have a data aspect in it.

Take for instance the example of Microsoft´s vision around building Collaborative applications where Microsoft Teams start becoming your preferred UX. It´s both Pro-dev and low-code developers starting to deal with data more effectively, secure and in a governed manner. And what I mean by this, you can read about here, in an earlier published blog post. Businesses modernize for different reasons.

Above visual gives you some guidelines around some of those reasons. The cosmos that surrounds the goals visualized is full of data. Understanding data from the past to prevent errors in the future. Analyzing historic data to retrieve and predict trends and improve in the future. If someone says, with the era of raising citizen developers we´re stepping into a new world of data security – my answer would be: No – we´re already into this.

Happy to further discuss this in upcoming posts or via Twitter. Until then, …