Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform Released:
There are 3 main principles for this platform:
The new products:
Innovation stack:
The bottom line is, this product is slightly thinner than Palantir, however does reveal how the competitive landscape within the enterprise software space is heating up more aggressively.
Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform Released:
“To help address the fragmentation that exists today between databases, analytics and governance, and enable organizations to unlock these new capabilities, we shared several exciting announcements today at Microsoft Build that demonstrate our continued innovation and investment in the data products our customers have come to know and trust, which will enable our customers to achieve the kind of sustained agility that allows them to pivot and adapt in real-time, add layers of intelligence to their applications, unlock fast and predictive insights, and govern their data—wherever it resides.”
Microsoft are building a platform to aid the fragmentation between databases, analytics, and governance via the “intelligent data platform.”
Today, Microsoft unveiled the new Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform. This is a leading cloud data platform that fully integrates databases, analytics, and governance. Furthermore, the product enables a seamless data platform, in which can empower organizations to invest more time into creating value rather than integrating and managing their data estate.
This ties in specifically with the notion of time-to-value, in which has been closely attributed towards Palantir. Time-to-value refers to productivity improvements, efficiencies, and overall costs being saved.
Alex Karp just today described Palantir as a “data integration platform”:
“Palantir has always had this shadowy company reputation, however at the core we are a data integration platform”, said Alex. The CEO went on by stating, the truth is, the answer to the question depends on what product one is buying?
There are 3 main principles for this platform:
- Accelerate innovation
- Achieve agility
- Build on a trusted platform
“This is about bringing all of our data products together into one fabric so you as developers can shift focus towards creativity instead of spending time on governance”.
Accelerate innovation:
The Microsoft platform is a leading cloud platform in which can fully integrate databases, analytics, and governance at once. Furthermore, this ensures that developers can focus on creating value, instead of integrating and managing their data.
Achieve agility:
Going forward, the same way that Microsoft officials talk about Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 as “the Microsoft Cloud,” they’ll also be talking about the three aspects of a data estate – databases, analytics, and governance — as “the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform,” said Rohan Kumar, Corporate Vice President of the Azure Data team.
Microsoft’s grand plan is to bring “the world’s data to the Microsoft Cloud” and “empower everyone on the planet to make better decisions with data.”
Build on a trusted platform:
Microsoft state how privacy and governance standards can not be an afterthought anymore. “Data governance has become top of mind for almost every organization”, says Microsoft.
“As we look beyond the horizon, machine learning and AI capabilities will be pivotal in harnessing the power of data in new ways.”
The new products:
There are a few new products in which fit under this intelligent platform umbrella:
SQL Server 2022: SQL Server 2022 integrates with Azure Synapse Link and Purview in the name of helping customers get deeper insights about their data. SSQL Server 2022 is integrated with the new link feature in Azure SQL Managed Instance, which helps with disaster recovery.
Azure Synapse Link for SQL: now in preview, is meant to help with “near real-time insights” between operational data stored in Azure SQL and Azure Synapse Analytics. Azure Synapse Link for SQL is now in public preview.
Purview Data Estate Insights: aimed at the Chief Data Officer and other governance stakeholders, is an app that will provide information about where data is distributed, where top data risks that need fixing are, and whether investments are paying off. The Purview Data Estate Insights app is in preview.
Datamart in Power BI: This new self-service capability is in Power BI Premium and is meant to help users to discover insights in their own data sets. Microsoft is describing Datamart in Power BI as bringing “turnkey data warehousing to millions of Power BI users” in a way they won’t have to rely on IT. This is in preview as of today.
Innovation stack:
The ideology of a culmination stack is a philosophy culminating of a series of interlocking inventions and micro-changes, that thereby result in mass improvements over time. This philosophy stemmed inspiration from Square’s Founder, McKelvey, when Amazon went face-to-face with Square in 2014. Square managed to out-beat Amazon, despite the fact that company was much smaller, had less capital, and inferior talent. We have tweaked the original thesis of the innovation stack to better fit the points we are making.
From an investment perspective, there is evidence that this philosophy of a culmination stack has utility, and thereby can be applied to all organisations. We believe, those organisations that follow the philosophy can produce exponential growth.
Palantir have competed with Microsoft beforehand, however it seems that the culmination stack enabled Palantir to gain a slight lead.
Another example of the culmination stack in play is through Palantir competing directly with Microsoft within the context of Skywise. Whilst Microsoft had the original contract with Boeing, for a platform analytics software in order to empower data to create insights, Palantir 2 years later managed to replace Microsoft as the dominant OS system for Skywise. As investors, this gives us another coherent example of Palantir incorporation of the culmination stack to product a net-good.
The fact that Palantir is solely focused on becoming the OS for the modern enterprise, indicates to us how they have the ability to outcompete organisations such as Microsoft, because of the fact that all their resources are solely focused upon one area. This is in comparison to many big-technology players, who spread their focus across a range of topics, in which often produces mediocre results.
It seems that now, perhaps Microsoft are in competition with Palantir in a more direct manner.
Similarly to Palantir, this new Microsoft initiative seems to compete with Palantir to an extent. Instead of offering an individualistic tool, like Snowflake, Microsoft are offering a whole suite of products in which are available under a single interface. However, whilst stating this, the new MSFT product is not as invasive as Palantir, and therefore can be described as slightly thinner.
Overall, this shows the competitiveness within the enterprise software space. This new product by Microsoft is a viable Palantir competitor. IT budgets within organisations are tight, & often within software, it can be very hard to identify the utility of a platform. This has called into concern the future competitive outlook for companies such as Palantir.
Read the full press release here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/introducing-the-microsoft-intelligent-data-platform/
