MICROSOFT’S POWER PLATFORM AND THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS APPLICATION SOFTWARE …WE’RE WAY PAST CRM. OVERVIEW The business intelligence, automation, and enterprise application landscape is changing dramatically. In the previous incarnation of enterprise technology, line-of-business owners were forced to choose between pre-baked commercial off the shelf (COTS) software that was difficult to customize and often did not truly meet A generation of business the business’s unique needs, versus custom solutions that – though applications whose time flexible and often tailor made to the business needs of the moment was up. – cost more and were far riskier to develop and deploy. Furthermore, certain classes of applications do not have a COTS answer, nor do Only so many needs could be met with COTS applications, but... they justify the cost of custom software development. In the chasm between the two arose a generation of quasi-apps, the homegrown Custom software development Excel spreadsheets, Access databases, Google docs, and all manner was time consuming and costly of other back-of-the-napkin “systems” that end users developed to Critical functions were run using fill the gap between the big software IT provided and what the users “quasi–apps” actually needed to do their jobs. Lack of enterprise–level control We’ve all been there: The massive spreadsheet that tracked a increased risk decade’s worth of employee travel but was always one accidental Evolving requirements and click away from oblivion, the quirky asset management database complexity were difficult to living on your office-mate’s desktop that was still named after an support employee who left the company five years ago, the SharePoint site Disparate business systems didn’t full of sensitive HR data, or the shared drive that had long been easily talk with one another shared a bit too liberally. A generation of do-it-yourself workers had grown up living on the edge of catastrophe with their quasi-apps. Three trends have converged to shatter this paradigm, fundamentally changing the relationship between business users, technologists, and their technology. Microsoft’s Power Platform and the Future of Business Application Software Pg. 2 Connectivity of everything. The new generation of business applications are hyper connected to one another. They allow for connections between business functions that were previously considered siloed, unrelated, or simply not feasible or practical. Travel plans set in motion by human resources decisions, medical procedures scheduled based on a combination of lab results and provider availability, employee recruiting driven by sales and contracts. Citizens’ uprising. Business users long settled for spreadsheets and SharePoint, but new “low-code / no- code” tools empower these “citizen creators” with the capability to build professional grade apps on their own. Airport baggage screeners are developing mobile apps that cut down on paper work, trainers and facilitators are putting interactive tools in the hands of their students, analysts and researchers are no longer dependent on developers to “pull data” and create stunning visualizations. New ways of looking at the world (and your data). This is not just about business intelligence (BI) and data visualization tools far outpacing anything that was just recently available. It’s not even just about business users’ ability to harness and extend them. This is about the ability of tools such as Microsoft Power BI to splice together, beautifully visualize, and help users interpret data that their organizations already own, data to which you’ve connected using one of the hundreds native connectors to third party services, and data generated every second of every minute of every day from the connected devices that enable the organization’s work. Microsoft Microsoft’s Power Platform and the Future of Business Application Software Pg. 3 INTRODUCING APPLICATION PLATFORM AS A SERVICE (APAAS) AND THE MICROSOFT POWER PLATFORM While COTS and high-cost / high control custom developed applications have a place in an enterprise, both are being eclipsed by a modern, best-of-both-worlds approach known as Application Platform as a Service (aPaaS). aPaaS is a modern, cloud-based construct that allows organizations to: • Build applications iteratively • Provision app software instantly • Scale apps on-demand • Integrate with other services Microsoft has developed this aPaaS concept as the Microsoft Power Platform, an end-to-end business application platform that includes the Common Data Service, PowerApps, Power BI, and Flow technologies, and now underpins the Dynamics 365 applications (formerly called “CRM”) that many organizations already know. Together, these technologies fulfill the promises of aPaaS, enabling business and technology partners to: • Rapidly create custom, containerized, no-code / low-code applications that meet different business and user group needs; • Integrate all data natively on the platform – no custom components required – and make that data available to any other application; • Employ “No Cliffs” development with tools that are easily extensible by professional developers and readily integrated with Azure cloud services. Microsoft’s Power Platform and the Future of Business Application Software Pg. 4 COMMON DATA SERVICE The magic of Power Platform’s data integration is in the Common Data Service (CDS). Long-time Microsoft Dynamics / CRM developers easily recognize the potential of XRM, while users of that application no doubt recognize the seamless way that data kept in one type of Dynamics record has been available, referenceable, and usable throughout the application. CDS represents the long-awaited next generation of that capability enabling applications that extend far beyond the traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functions. Newcomer or seasoned pro, the upshot here is that all data generated by all applications built on the platform resides in CDS. That means that data associated with an application built to track (say) training qualifications for employees at a federal government agency can be seamlessly shared that agency’s application built for (say) asset management, allowing one’s qualification on a vehicle to determine which vehicles he may check out, or one’s job position to drive which gear she is issued. An application built to collect airline passenger feedback on one flight can propagate data to a separate mobile app that gives flight attendants the insight they need to personalize each passenger’s experience.Delayed in first class last week? Have a glass of wine on the house while traveling coach this week. And thanks for choosing our airline… we’re glad you’re up here with us. This integration of data on the platform happens natively, with no custom components required, and is controlled to a granular application, user, and field level through a suite of proven, native security controls. Microsoft’s Power Platform and the Future of Business Application Software Pg. 5 POWERAPPS Far beyond a tool for point-and-click development of mobile apps (though it does that, too), Microsoft PowerApps is the native environment for creating and interacting with end-user functionality on the platform. Developers and citizen creators alike use PowerApps to build applications that run natively in mobile, web, and desktop environments across any popular combination of devices and operating systems. Where traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and CRM solutions forced users to interact with unattractive, monolithic, and often sluggish applications, PowerApps turns the paradigm on its head, allowing users to create smaller apps that are targeted for very specific use cases yet draw on the common source of business data housed in the CDS. These apps are built using one of two constructs. • Canvas apps allow creators to start with a blank “canvas” or template – much like creating a PowerPoint slide – and use a combination of drag-and-drop objects and simple Excel-like queries to build the app’s functionality. Just like PowerPoint, creators can run the app right in the builder as they drag, drop, and customize their way to a final product. • Model-driven apps leverage existing data structures to rapidly build functionality logically organized around similar business processes, pulling in record types, views of data, charts and dashboards, and then displaying that functionality using Microsoft’s modern unified interface optimized for both desktop web and mobile consumption. Because PowerApps are built atop the CDS, their data is available to other PowerApps in the same environment, subject to the granular security model, and deployable across the enterprise. POWER BI Power Platform’s answer to rich, visually compelling data visualization and business intelligence, Power BI consumes all of the data stored by PowerApps in CDS, and then integrates with data found across hundreds of third-party services (see “Integrations with Third Party Services” below). The result are charts, dashboards, and other visualizations that are as aesthetically stunning as they are rich in content. FLOW Microsoft Flow delivers an easy to use workflow builder for line-of-business users, allowing them to automate time-consuming tasks and processes across apps and services with Flow’s low-code builder. With Flow, enterprise organizations can move workflow creation for business solutions away from IT and closer to the day to day business. By removing IT from the picture, time to create workflows is