Microsoft Purview

While originally released as Azure Purview in September 2021, it was rebranded as Microsoft Purview in April 2022.

The newer release served as a step up from the previous iteration bringing together former Azure Purview and Microsoft 365 Compliance portfolio functionalities under a single brand to create a more unified platform for end users.

According to Microsoft, Microsoft Purview helps businesses understand and govern the data across their entire estate, safeguard that data wherever it lives, and improve the risk and compliance posture in a much simpler way than traditional solutions.

Microsoft Purview gives organizations a a unified data governance solution. By summarizing your data estate, it delivers key insights on stewardship and governance while also pointing out the possible risks involved with your foundational data. Purview allows data leaders to govern and administer their on-premises, multi-cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) data while also having a better understanding of their overall data estate.

Microsoft Purview performs several core features including:

• Audit
  Support forensic investigations and meet regulatory requirements with critical audit log events, and customized retention policies.

• Communication Compliance
  Foster a safe and compliant workplace by detecting sensitive or inappropriate content shared across your organization’s communication channels.

• Compliance Manager
  Reduce risk by translating complex regulatory requirements into specific improvement actions that help you raise your score and track progress.

• Data Lifecycle Management
  Classify and govern data at scale to meet your legal, business, privacy, and regulatory content obligations.

• Data Loss Prevention
  Automatically protect sensitive information from risky and unauthorized access across apps, services, endpoints, and on-premises files.

• Data Map and Data Catalog
  Maximize the business value of data for your consumers by creating a unified map to automate and manage metadata from hybrid sources. Make data easily discoverable and understand the origin of your data with interactive data lineage visualization.

• eDiscovery
  Discover and manage your data in-place with end-to-end workflows for internal or legal investigations.

• Information Protection
  Discover, identify, classify, and protect sensitive data that is business critical, then manage and protect it across your environment.

• Insider Risk Management
  Detect, investigate, and take action on critical risks in your organization, including data theft, data leaks, and security policy violations.

Microsoft Purview manages all of your enterprise data by bringing governance and compliance products together under a single umbrella.

Azure Data Factory

The original version of Azure Data Factory (ADF) was released to the public in August 2015 with an upgraded version hitting public preview in June 2018.

According to Microsoft, Azure Data Factory is a fully managed, serverless data integration service with more than 90 built-in, maintenance-free connectors. From there, it enables you to deliver this integrated data to Azure Synapse Analytics to optimize results for reporting and analytics and leverage business insights.

Azure Data Factory provides cloud-based data integration while allowing you to create workflows for managing and orchestrating data movement and transformation. By enabling you to automate data movement between supported data stores, ADF ensures that your enterprise remains data-driven during every necessary data migration.

Azure Synapse

While initially announced at Microsoft Ignite in November 2019, Azure Synapse Analytics was made generally available in December 2020.

According to Microsoft, Azure Synapse Analytics is a limitless analytics service that brings together data integration, enterprise data warehousing and big data analytics. This enables users to query data on their terms with serverless or dedicated options. MIDP users are then provided with the option to land this operational data and provide it with dedicated SQL pools through the Azure Synapse Link for SQL.

Azure Synapse Link for SQL automatically transports your critical enterprise data from these databases and applications promptly while taking the workload for you. The integrative link offers you real-time analytics on your Azure-stored data and replicates data from your transactional SQL databases moving this over to an SQL pool in Azure Synapse Analytics. With minimal impact on your source systems, you can finally benefit from near real-time analytics while replicating important data with a low-code/no-code solution.

With Synapse, data can finally be replicated with full consistency.

Power BI

While initially referred to as Project Crescent during its 2011 release, Microsoft provided it with additional features such as Questions and Answers, enterprise-level data connectivity and more before it was rebranded to the public in 2015 as Power BI.

According to Microsoft, it is a unified, scalable platform for self-service and enterprise business intelligence (BI) allowing users to connect and visualize any data, and seamlessly infuse the visuals into their daily apps.

Power BI is interactive software that allows you to fully visualize, analyze and realize your data estate and the potential value that it can bring. It serves as a key part of the Microsoft Power Platform with a primary focus on business intelligence (BI). With the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform also comes a premium self-service capability for Power BI called Datamart.

Datamart enables you to see actionable insights throughout each set of enterprise data. Developers and analysts can centrally govern and manage their workload(s) while saving time on pulling insights and easing the need and demand for IT assistance. Using Power BI, you can drive your organization’s digital transformation at every level with simplified data warehousing capabilities.

Azure Databricks

Before developing a relationship with Microsoft, Databricks began as a software company founded by the creators of Apache Spark in 2013 with the intent of developing a web-based platform for working with Spark. After launching as a first-party service on Microsoft Azure in November 2017, Azure Databricks remains an integral component for Microsoft’s machine learning capabilities and data science use cases.

Azure Databricks enables data-centric users to design AI and machine learning (ML) solutions with analytics based on Apache Spark. The service offers large-scale data processing, updated analytics and simplified/accelerated data science all rooted in a fast, open-source environment.

Azure SQL

Originally announced in 2009 and released the following year, Azure SQL serves as Microsoft’s premier managed cloud database. It was first updated in 2014 before sharing the SQL Server 2016 codebase.

According to Microsoft, the database allows customers to migrate, modernize and innovate on the modern SQL family of cloud databases while providing a unified experience across an entire SQL portfolio with a full range of deployment options from edge to cloud.

Azure SQL is a fully managed platform as a service (PaaS) database engine that automatically handles several functions including upgrading, patching, backups and monitoring without relying on action from the user. It is always running on the current SQL Server database engine and patched OS. Its built-in PaaS capabilities allow users to focus on domain-specific administration and optimization actions that are crucial for data-driven organizations.

SQL Server 2022

Recently released in November 2022, Microsoft’s latest cloud server includes many new and useful features highlighting by fully managed disaster recovery allowing users to replicate data both to and from the cloud.

According to Microsoft, the SQL Server 2022 is their most Azure-enabled release yet with continued performance, security and availability innovation. Key capabilities include:

• Business continuity through Azure
• Seamless analytics over on-prem operational data
• Visibility over an entire data estate
• The most secure database in the past decade
• Industry-leading performance and availability

It also includes hybrid capabilities with pay-as-you-go pricing. In order to provide a streamlined management experience, it manages the user’s SQL Server estate from the Azure portal. It is a key component for organizations to manage and govern their entire data estate with secure and trusted data.