Ignite 2020, Microsoft' s annual IT conference, featured over 170 Azure-related sessions. For followers of the Power Platform, one standout presentation looked at growing interplay between Azure and Power BI.

Revisiting familiar themes

Tools like Power BI have an important role to play in digital transformation, said Microsoft CVP Arun Ulagaratchagan, particularly amidst the rapid changes brought on by Covid-19. Power BI and its sibling tools in the Power Platform are continually pitched to customers as a way to empower individual workers with insights and establish an organization's data culture.

The Power Platform, broadly, has developed as a flexible interconnect among Microsoft products like Azure, Dynamics 365, and Office 365. As of September 2020, Ulagaratchagan told attendees that Power BI has a huge global footprint, available in 43 languages, 45 data centers, and the national clouds of the US, Germany, and China. Its list of security certifications continues to grow as well. On the list: FedRAMP, HIPAA, CSA, IRAP as well as EU, German and UK national government security standards.

Adding performance acceleration for Azure Synapse Analytics