Fabric Community Conference 2024: How Microsoft Fabric will shape Business Applications

Microsoft Business Applications have always been closely connected to the data and computing services on which they run. And as Microsoft’s data platform vision focuses on the SaaS opportunities of Fabric, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform customers will want to adjust their planning around data management, integration, analytics, and beyond.

At Fabric Community Conference 2024, Microsoft representatives shared a few of the early areas in the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform landscape where Fabric’s elements could impact a customer’s longterm planning. Architecture considerations, product roadmaps, complexity, and pricing will all factor into the value of Fabric’s promise to unify an organization’s data estate. 

Let’s look at three examples from the event of how Fabric could influence the future of business apps from Microsoft.

Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations customers must pick an approach: Azure Synapse Link or Fabric Link

Microsoft wants all Dynamics 365 and Power Platform customers to know that Dataverse’s relationship to Fabric is optimized and low cost. But Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations customers using older data lake export methods will have to make important decisions about their analytics architecture over the next few months.

D365 F&O customers currently have a range of ways to export data for analysis, ranging from legacy approaches like BYOD, Data Export Service (DES), export to data lake, and the classic version of Synapse Link. 

But going forward, F&O customers will have two preferred patterns: Link to Fabric, which natively connects with Dataverse, or Synapse Link for Dataverse, which provides a continuous export to an organization’s own data lake.