FabCon Europe 2024: Key September Updates in Microsoft Fabric

This week, the Cloud Services team attended the European Microsoft Fabric Community Conference in Stockholm, which is dedicated to the latest updates on the Microsoft Fabric Platform and newest developments and Analytics & AI.   

As a Fabric Featured Partner, we are thrilled to share the latest updates from the Microsoft Fabric team, which bring significant improvements for our customers. Microsoft Fabric continues to be a market-changing solution, with continuous advancements ensuring it remains at the forefront of innovation.   

Initially, Fabric was built on four principles: Fabric is a complete platform, Fabric is lake-centric and open, Fabric empowers every business user, and last but not least, Fabric is AI-powered. Today, we observe how Fabric enriches with even more AI-powered features, transforming the way we prepare data, build models, interact with reports, and gain insights, ultimately driving better business results. 

 Here are some Key Points of upcoming updates in Fabric:  

1. UI Update for Deployment Pipelines (Preview): The updated UI offers a more focused, more straightforward navigation and smoother flow, enhancing user experience.  
2. Terraform Provider (Preview): This feature ensures deployments and management tasks are executed accurately and consistently, allowing users to automate and streamline processes using a declarative configuration language.  
3. Support for Azure Service Principal in REST APIs: This update helps automate the deployment and management of Fabric environments, including managing principal permissions for Fabric workspaces and creating and managing Fabric artifacts like eventhouses and lakehouses.  
4. General Availability of Fabric Git Integration: Users can now sync Fabric workspaces with Git repositories, leverage version control, and collaborate seamlessly using Azure DevOps or GitHub.  
5. Extended Integration with Visual Studio Code: Debug Fabric notebooks with the web version of VS Code and integrate Fabric environments as artifacts with the Synapse VS Code extension, allowing exploration and management from within VS Code.  

“These new features open up exciting possibilities for us and our customers, significantly enhancing our capabilities. The updated UI, Terraform Provider, and extended integration with Visual Studio Code streamline processes and improve efficiency. The real-time intelligence enhancements and enterprise-ready features enable us to deliver precise, automated deployments, seamless version control, and robust management of Fabric environments. This allows our clients to reduce operational overhead and accelerate development cycles,” says Andrew Dakhov, Cloud Services Managing Partner.  

Important Block of New Valuable Features related to Real-Time Intelligence Enhancements:  

1. New Real-Time Hub UX: The redesigned experience includes a new left navigation, a “My Streams” page for custom streams, and four new Eventstream connectors (Azure SQL MI CDC, SQL Server on VM CDC, Apache Kafka, and Amazon MSK Kafka), enabling more prosperous, more dynamic Eventstreams.  
2. Eventhouse as a Destination for Data Streams: Eventhouses, equipped with KQL Databases, are designed for real-time analytics and exploration, handling large volumes of data efficiently.  
3. Upgraded Copilot in Fabric: The assistant now supports conversational mode, translating natural language into KQL and allowing follow-up questions. It also includes multi-variate anomaly detection and can create real-time dashboards instantly.  
4. Enhanced Data Activator Experience: Define a variety of rules to act in response to data changes over time, with improved rule richness and the ability to set up alerts from all streaming data, Power BI visuals, real-time dashboards, and KQL queries.  

  “With the latest updates to Microsoft Fabric, including all new features related to AI-powered analytics, real-time intelligence, and upgraded Copilot, our company finds it significantly easier to demonstrate the value and versatility of this powerful platform to our clients,” says Cloud Services CEO, Iryna Moiseyeva.  

Enterprise-Ready Features Contributing to an  Enhanced and Secure environment and More Mature Data Governance:   

1. Native Execution Engine for Fabric Spark: The upgraded Fabric Runtime 1.3 enhances Spark job performance, achieving up to four times faster performance compared to traditional Spark.  
2. Network Security Features: Trusted workspace access and managed private endpoints are now available in all Fabric capacities, including trial capacities.  
3. Integration with Microsoft Purview: Security admins can use Purview Information Protection sensitivity labels to manage access to Fabric items, similar to Microsoft 365.  
4. Support for Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Policies: Apply DLP policies to detect sensitive data uploads, triggering automatic audit activities and alerts.  
5. Granular Data Management Capabilities: Item tagging and domain enhancements help users find and manage data more effectively.  
6. Enhanced Domain Controls: Admins can define default sensitivity labels, delegate export and sharing settings, and gain insights into tenant domains.  

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