Microsoft Unveils Unified Data and AI Platform Vision at Barcelona Conference
Microsoft has unveiled its vision for a unified data and AI platform at its Fabric + SQL European Community Conference in Barcelona. The company's goal is to make artificial intelligence an integral part of its customers' core processes, with a focus on context.
Arun Ulag, executive vice president of Azure Data, revealed that Fabric boasts over 40,000 customers, 2.6 million active users, and certifications are the fastest-growing within the Microsoft ecosystem. SQL continues to be a core technology for enterprise workloads, used by over 90% of Fortune 500 companies.
At the center of this effort is Fabric IQ, a shared intelligence layer that connects OneLake data, Power BI semantic model metrics, and context from ontologies and real-time intelligence. Microsoft has also integrated Fabric IQ with its new Copilot, allowing the assistant to work with a shared business view built on each organization's data and knowledge.
The company is expanding Fabric applications to facilitate the transition from prototype to production, enabling developers to connect applications with Fabric data stores, SQL databases, lakehouses, and Power BI semantic models without duplicating data. New features include TypeScript backend support and PostgreSQL integration.