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Artikel uit SDN Magazine 148
In today’s data-driven world, businesses use data to transform and achieve a competitive advantage digitally. As we reach a new era defined by artificial intelligence, this data becomes even more crucial. You can use and create everyday AI experiences that change how employees spend their time using generative AI and language modelling technologies. However, to fuel these AI experiences, a consistent supply of clean data from a well-managed and well-integrated analytics system is required.
Meet Microsoft Fabric, an end-to-end, unified analytics platform that combines an organization’s data and analytics capabilities.
Fabric combines Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Power BI into a single package, allowing data and business experts to unleash their data and set the groundwork for the AI era.
What distinguishes Microsoft Fabric as an analytics platform is its comprehensiveness. Every analytics project has subsystems that require various skills, frequently from many vendors. Integrating these items can be difficult, risky, and costly. You can use Fabric to use a single solution with a unified experience and architecture that delivers all of the features required by a developer to extract insights from data and display them to the business user.
Fabric enables every team in the analytics process to have the necessary role-specific experiences. Data engineers, data warehouse specialists, data scientists, data analysts, and business users are all welcome. Power BI in Fabric offers industry-leading visualization and AI-powered analytics to help business analysts and users gain insights from data.
The integration of Azure OpenAI Service and how it enables data practitioners to use generative AI to design and optimize their data workflows is, in my opinion, the most intriguing aspect of Microsoft Fabric to focus on. Generative AI is cutting-edge technology that creates unique and realistic content such as text, photos, audio, and video. It can also assist with data cleansing, data augmentation, data synthesis, data summarization, data visualization, and other tasks. Microsoft is empowering data practitioners to utilize the power of generative AI and create new possibilities for data analytics and AI experiences by embedding Azure OpenAI Service into every layer of Fabric. It demonstrates how Microsoft Fabric is more than just a complete data platform solution; it is also a catalyst for creativity and transformation in the AI era.
Fabric combines the most significant features of data mesh, data fabric, and data hub to give a one-stop shop for data integration, data engineering, real-time analytics, data science, and business intelligence without sacrificing data privacy and security.
What is the significance of Microsoft Fabric? The use cases are intended for various applications, including data integration, warehousing, data science and machine learning, real-time and predictive analytics, BI and reporting. Assume you are a retail organization that wishes to analyse sales data across multiple dimensions. You may ingest, convert, and load your sales data into the lake house using Microsoft Fabric’s lake house solution for comprehensive analytics on a single SaaS platform.
In conclusion, Microsoft Fabric introduces a new approach to data platforms. It is designed to help organizations fully utilize their data and drive digital transformation in the age of AI. Fabric provides a complete solution with a range of full-service capabilities, all supported by a shared platform that ensures strong data security, governance, and compliance.
Microsoft Fabric Simplifies Data Analytics: A Comprehensive Solution for the AI Era.
In the case of a retail organization examining sales data, Microsoft Fabric offers a comprehensive solution that allows you to move, process, and analyse your data quickly. You may use Azure Data Factory to build data pipelines that carry sales data from various sources into Azure Data Lake Storage. This procedure can be automated and scheduled to keep your data current.
Once your data is in the lake house, you may convert and clean it with Azure Synapse Analytics. Tasks such as deleting duplicates, filling in missing values, and aggregating data fall under this category. You can use Azure Synapse Analytics to accomplish these transformations by writing SQL or Spark code, or you can utilize the visual data flow designer to develop transformations without writing any code.
Following the transformation and cleaning of your data, you can use Power BI to generate interactive dashboards and reports that provide insights into your sales success. Power BI has a variety of visualization choices, such as charts, tables, maps, and more. You can also utilize Power BI’s AI-powered analytics features to automatically detect patterns and trends in your data.
In addition to these fundamental capabilities, Microsoft Fabric interfaces with Azure OpenAI Service, allowing you to employ generative AI in your data operations. You could use generative AI to clean and supplement your sales data, for example, by producing realistic synthetic data to fill in missing numbers or balance skewed datasets. You might also utilize generative AI to create fresh data for testing and experimentation and summarize massive datasets for speedier analysis.
Overall, Microsoft Fabric offers a comprehensive solution for unlocking the full potential of your data and driving digital transformation in your organization.
Investigate Use Cases and Tutorials to Help You on Your Data Analytics Journey
Here are some concrete use cases of how Microsoft Fabric can be used:
- Data Warehousing: Microsoft Fabric’s Synapse-powered data warehousing advances data warehousing.
- Data Integration: Microsoft Fabric makes data integration easier.
- Data Science and Machine Learning: Microsoft Fabric supports End-to-end data science workflows.
- Real-Time Analytics: Real-time analysis is possible with Microsoft Fabric.
- Predictive Analytics: Microsoft Fabric enables precise forecasting of future patterns.
- Business Intelligence and Reporting: Microsoft Fabric offers industry-leading visualization and AI-powered analytics, allowing business analysts and users to gain insights from data.
In addition to these use cases, Microsoft Fabric provides end-to-end tutorials that walk you through scenarios that cover the entire process, from data collecting to data consumption. These tutorials are intended to help you gain a basic grasp of the Fabric UI, the numerous Fabric experiences and integration points, and the professional and citizen developer experiences that are accessible.
Investigate Microsoft Fabric’s Capabilities: Register for the Preview Trial and Create Your Demo
Sign up for the Microsoft Fabric (Preview) trial to try out Microsoft Fabric. This trial is free for 60 days, but Microsoft may extend it at their discretion. The Microsoft Fabric (Preview) sample gives you access to the Fabric product experiences and the resources for creating and hosting Fabric products. If you already have a Power BI account, skip to the Start the Fabric (Preview) trial. If you are new to Power BI, you must sign up for a free Power BI license before beginning the Fabric (Preview) trial.
To begin the Fabric (Preview) trial, go to the Fabric site and click on the Account Management link. Select Start Trial in Account Management. Accept the terms if requested, and then click Start Trial. You will receive a confirmation message once your trial capacity is ready. You may also learn more about Microsoft Fabric by exploring its features via Microsoft Learn training programs. End-to-end analytics with Microsoft Fabric, lake houses in Microsoft Fabric, Apache Spark in Microsoft Fabric, Delta Lake tables in Microsoft Fabric, Data Factory pipelines in Microsoft Fabric, data warehouses in Microsoft Fabric, Real-Time Analytics in Microsoft Fabric, and data science in Microsoft Fabric are among the topics covered in these modules.
I’ve introduced a new solution and shared my observations with you. I’d like to hear your ideas and experiences with it. Do you have any unique use cases from your environment that would benefit from implementation?
Meet Afra Nur Doludizgin, a Data & AI Specialist at Microsoft and a marbling art artist. Driven by her passion for using data to make a positive impact on society, Afra is excited by the technology and innovation in the Data & AI industry. Authenticity is a value she brings to everything she does. In her free time, Afra volunteers to promote diversity and inclusion, focusing on charity work in Africa, empowering gender equality, and supporting refugees. She leads a team of volunteers for one of her projects. Outside of work, Afra enjoys traveling, savoring a good cup of coffee, spinning classes, running marathons and creating marbling art. She also writes technical and society-related opinion articles for digital magazines.