As part of our Fabric Community Hub—a virtual hangout for Fabric users to connect with community members, ask questions, and learn—we’ve developed the Fabric Career Hub. It’s your all-in-one repository for Fabric know-how, featuring every learning resource we have to help you ditch the data silos, streamline your workflows, and unleash the hidden potential of your information.

Begin your journey to become a Fabric Analytics Engineer

As its popularity grows, dedicated Fabric experts will be in high demand. That’s why we’ve developed a fresh batch of learning resources and skilling opportunities, all tailored to helping you get certified for a brand new role: Fabric Analytics Engineer.

Fabric Analytics Engineers play a crucial role in the data analysis ecosystem, acting as the bridge between raw data and actionable insights. Your primary responsibility is to prepare, transform, and deliver high-quality data from diverse Fabric components—lakehouses, data warehouses, semantic models, notebooks, and more—for data scientists, analysts, and other stakeholders to analyze and draw conclusions from.

You’re an essential part of the team, and need strong coding skills, data modeling expertise, and a deep understanding of business objectives.

If your interest is piqued, then Microsoft Learn’s upcoming Implementing Analytics Solutions Using Microsoft Fabric exam is how to prove you’ve got what it takes. Launching in March, this comprehensive exam will evaluate your expertise in these areas:

• Plan, implement, and manage a solution for data analytics.
• Prepare and serve data.
• Implement and manage semantic models.
• Explore and analyze data.

How do you get that expertise? Glad you asked.

Get started with Microsoft Fabric Career Hub

Fabric Career Hub has everything you need to get certified as a Fabric Analytics Engineer, in just a few steps:

Step 1: Fabric Analytics Engineer Cloud Skills Challenge: Looking to sharpen their skills, but also craving a little friendly competition? The Microsoft Cloud Skills Challenges are part interactive learning sprint, part good-natured tournament between you and thousands of your peers around the globe. These immersive, gamified learning experiences are a blend of hands-on exercises, tutorials, and assessments to ensure a well-rounded learning experience. Complete the challenge in 30 days to earn a 50% discount off the price of the certification exam.

Step 2: Learn Together: We’ll also have a of live sessions, hosted by Fabric experts, with detailed walkthroughs of Fabric learning resources. These sessions are typically broadcasted live with instructor Q&A, and then available on-demand.

Step 3: Exam Cram: Put on a pot of coffee and slip into some sweatpants—it’s time to study. In these one-hour cram sessions (coming soon) certified trainers will guide you through focus areas, pepper you with sample questions, and impart any helpful tips and tricks to get your ready for the big test.  

Step 4: Practice Test: Put your knowledge to the test with this practice test featuring 50 sample questions to help you identify specific areas to focus on, ensuring you’re well-equipped to ace your certification.

Step 5: Schedule Your Exam As the DP-600 exam exits beta and goes live, seize the opportunity to schedule your certification exam. Anticipated to go live at the end of March, this step marks the culmination of your preparation journey–but be quick, there are limited spots available.

Join us at the Microsoft Fabric Global AI Hackathon

Looking to stretch your Fabric skills (pun intended) even further? Mark your calendars for February 15th, because the Microsoft Fabric Global AI Hackathon is here to unleash your creative potential and propel your skills to the next level. This online, free-to-join event is your playground for exploring the power of Azure Fabric and Microsoft AI, all while collaborating with fellow tech enthusiasts and competing for exciting prizes.

Bring your data into the era of AI

Reshape how everyone accesses, manages, and acts on data with a single, AI-powered platform

Learn more

Fuel your imagination with endless possibilities:

• Choose your path: Whether you’re a solo adventurer or a team player, dive into any of the diverse challenges offered. Design AI solutions for real-world problems, build chatbots with personality, or explore the cutting edge of natural language processing—the possibilities are endless.
• Level up your expertise: Dive into a treasure trove of learning resources, including workshops, live sessions with Microsoft experts, and exclusive access to Azure OpenAI. This is your chance to gain valuable insights, sharpen your skills, and become a Fabric and AI maestro.
• Connect and collaborate: The hackathon isn’t just about individual brilliance; it’s about sharing ideas, brainstorming solutions, and building impactful connections. Join the dedicated hackathon forum, meet like-minded peers, and foster lasting collaborations.

Register for the hackathon and start planning your winning idea. Remember, not only will you have the chance to showcase your innovative creations to the world, but you’ll also be in the running for incredible prizes. So, grab your coding gear, fire up your creative engines, and prepare to hack your way into the AI future.

Connect with community members through the Career Hub Forum

Seamlessly connect with experts and knowledgeable community members through our dynamic online community, Career Hub Forum. Whether you’re navigating learning modules or tackling specific challenges like deploying on Fabric, this forum provides an interactive space for you to engage with community leaders and Microsoft experts. Ask questions, seek guidance, and enhance your learning experience in this supportive and collaborative environment.

Elevate your learning and connect with experts through Microsoft Learning Rooms

Dive into a unique learning experience with Learning Rooms—a community site tailored for those seeking expert guidance on their technical skilling journey. Exclusively hosted on Microsoft Teams, Learning Rooms provide an avenue where questions find answers exclusively from Microsoft experts. Unlock a space designed for in-depth discussions, collaboration, and personalized support for your ongoing skilling endeavors. Join multiple Learning Rooms to expand your horizons and tap into the wealth of knowledge offered by Microsoft Learn experts.

Hear from industry leaders at the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference

Join us at the forefront of data and AI innovation at the inaugural Microsoft Fabric Community Conference. Gain insights from global Microsoft and community experts, explore hands-on experiences with new cutting-edge features across Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Databases, Azure AI, Microsoft Purview, and beyond. Register now to be part of this transformative event, connect with a diverse community of data innovators, and equip your organization for the AI era.

Explore, learn, and thrive with the Fabric Career Hub

With the Fabric Career Hub, we’re unleashing a torrent of knowledge with interactive activities, exciting challenges, and expert-led deep dives into all thing Microsoft Fabric. From beginner basics to pro-level pipelines, you can craft your Fabric future brick by brick. Get started today by visiting the Fabric Career Hub homepage.

The post Dive into the future of cloud analytics with the Fabric Career Hub appeared first on Microsoft Fabric Blog.

This excitement means data leaders are accelerating AI projects across their organizations. But as you prepare for a future built on AI, you also need clean data to fuel AI. Fostering game-changing AI innovation requires a well-orchestrated data estate that can support everything from niche AI projects to scalable AI solutions that span the company. This is a challenging prospect for most organizations whose data environments have grown organically over time with specialized and fragmented solutions. A complex data estate leads to data sprawl and duplication, infrastructure inefficiencies, limited interoperability, and even data exposure risks—not an ideal place to start your AI innovation.

For businesses looking to streamline and advance their data estate, the burden is often on you, the data leader, to evaluate potentially thousands of data and AI offerings, find the right set of services, figure out how to integrate them, and do it all in such a way that is scalable and flexible enough to evolve over time. Most data leaders would rather focus on the outcomes of their tools rather than spend all their time integrating specialized solutions and maintaining their data estate. That’s where Microsoft Fabric comes into play.

Microsoft Fabric is redesigning how you work with data by bringing all your data and analytics tools into a single experience. Fabric moves away from individualized services to a unified stack, from multiple databases to a unified data lake, from generative AI bolted on to generative AI simply built in. With Fabric, your teams can use shortcuts and mirroring to connect data from any cloud or database into Fabric’s data lake, OneLake, often without duplicating or moving it. Once in OneLake, everyone can work from a single copy across multiple engines and data formats. Your data professionals have all the specialized tools they need in one unified software as a service (SaaS) experience to reduce the cost and effort of integration. The intelligence you uncover can then securely flow to the Microsoft 365 applications your teams use every day to improve decision making and drive impact. And AI-powered features like Copilot help everyone be more productive—whether it’s creating dataflows and pipelines, writing SQL statements, or building reports.

Microsoft Fabric

Bring your data into the era of AI.

Discover more

How to get started with Microsoft Fabric

With so many capabilities in a single platform, it’s likely hard to fully understand exactly how Microsoft Fabric can impact your organization. That’s why we’ve created an e-book called Microsoft Fabric: The Essential Guide for Decision Makers which you can download for free.

This guide helps you discover everything Fabric has to offer and illustrates what you can accomplish with Fabric serving as your data foundation. And this e-book is only the first in a three-part series. You can also check out:

• Volume 2: Modern Analytics: A Foundation to Sustained AI Success to learn how to unlock value from your data with powerful AI tools.
• Volume 3: Manage and Govern Your Data with Microsoft Fabric and Microsoft Purview to learn how Microsoft Fabric enables and simplifies data stewardship.

Watch the Fabric overview video to see the analytics solution in action:

Explore additional resources to learn about Microsoft Fabric

If you want to learn more about Microsoft Fabric, consider:

• Signing up for the Microsoft Fabric free trial.
• Visiting the Microsoft Fabric website.
• Registering to attend the Microsoft Fabric Conference—use code MSCUST to save $100.
• Reading the latest announcements and watching the Fabric sessions from Microsoft Ignite.
• Discovering more in-depth, technical blogs on the Microsoft Fabric Updates Blog.
• Joining the Fabric community.
• Reaching out to your Microsoft account team or contacting a sales specialist to demo Fabric and explore pricing options.

¹https://web-assets.bcg.com/1e/4f/925e66794465ad89953ff604b656/mit-bcg-expanding-ai-impact-with-organizational-learning-oct-2020-n.pdf

The post The essential guide to Microsoft Fabric for data leaders appeared first on Microsoft Fabric Blog.

These are some of the questions that we explore in Insights Tomorrow, a podcast for data enthusiasts of all levels. Whether you are a student, a professional, a hobbyist, or just curious about data, this podcast is for you. In each episode, we interview experts and practitioners from different fields and domains, who share their insights and experiences with data. We also discuss the latest trends and developments in data science, data journalism, data visualization, data ethics, and more. 

Our goal is to help you learn something new, get inspired, and have fun with data. We believe that data matters, and that everyone can benefit from learning how to use data effectively. So, join us as we dive into the world of data and discover how data can make a difference in our lives and society. 

Insights Tomorrow podcast

Unlocking value from data

Listen now

About the host

Insights Tomorrow is hosted by Patrick LeBlanc, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft and contributing partner to Guy in a Cube. Along with his over 15 years of experience in IT, he holds a Master of Science degree from Louisiana State University. He is the author and co-author of five SQL Server books. Before joining Microsoft, he was awarded the Microsoft MVP award for his contributions to the community. Patrick is a regular speaker at many SQL Server conferences and community events. 

How to listen and subscribe 

You can find Insights Tomorrow on our website, where you can listen to the episodes online or you can also subscribe to Insights Tomorrow on your favorite podcast app, such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music. 

Why should you listen and subscribe 

• You will learn from experts and practitioners who have real-world experience and knowledge with data. 
• You will discover new tools, techniques, methods, and resources that can help you improve your data skills and projects. 
• You will get inspired by the stories and examples of how data can be used for good, for innovation, for creativity, and for social change. 
• You will have fun and enjoy the conversations and discussions that we have with our guests and hosts. 
• You will become part of a community of data enthusiasts who share your passion and curiosity for data. 

So, what are you waiting for? Start listening and subscribe to Insights Tomorrow today and join us on our journey to explore the world of data. Here are episodes that you can tune into from our respected guests on the podcast and stay tuned for more episodes soon! 

Episodes

Episode #1: Reframing Data Strategy Alignment 

Organizational alignment on a data strategy is essential to realizing the transformative impact of applying an organization’s data to its fullest potential. This is easier said than done, despite there being a general alignment amongst an organization’s leaders on the transformative opportunities to apply their data. Why is it hard for an organization to align a data strategy? What is the top-line considerations for an organization’s leadership to avoid or break out of the deadlock states that hinder the acceleration of data value creation? What is the breakthrough path for the Data Strategy Alignment Conundrum? 

Guest: Karthik Ravindran, General Manager of Enterprise Data at Microsoft. 

Episode #2: Demystifying Data Modernization Patterns 

Data modernization refers to the process of upgrading and transforming data systems, infrastructure, and processes to meet the demands of modern data-driven organizations. It involves the adoption of new technologies and techniques to increase data quality, speed, scalability, and agility. To help organizations navigate this complex process, several data modernization patterns have emerged that provide a framework for modernizing data systems. 

Guest: Jeeva AKR, Leads the Cloud Scale Analytics go-to-market for Microsoft. 

Episode #3: What’s Governance Got to Do with It? 

Every data and analytics leader knows a simple but critical fact: your data is only as good as your governance. It’s essential to have data stewards and well-defined guidelines to keep your data clean, secure, organized, and compliant. But what does good governance look like in a world where data lives everywhere and is constantly changing? 

Guests: Erik Zwiefel, Chief Data and Analytics Officer for the Americas, Cumarran Kaliyaperumal, Chief Data and AI Officer for APAC. 

Epsiode #4: The Health of Data 

Having real-time access to secure, accurate data is critical in the healthcare industry. From storage and data integration to enabling governance across all of the systems that rely on sensitive patient information, every aspect of data management must be carefully considered when implementing a cloud strategy. Advancements in technology have made it easier than ever for healthcare professionals to access up-to-date information and gain new insights that can improve patient care. 

Guest: Anders Reinhardt, Senior Director of Business Intelligence and Global IT at Coloplast. 

Epsiode #5: The Blooming of AI Spring 

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is a term that’s synonymous with the world of data. From data inputs that have driven the growth of AI, to the modern applications that can be applied to data models to accelerate time to insights, AI is at the forefront of innovation. But that hasn’t always been the case. Today we’re in the midst of a renewed “AI Spring” where we’re seeing a resurgence in development and new possibilities we never thought imaginable. 

Guest: Buck Woody, Applied Data Scientist on the Azure Data Services team at Microsoft. 

Episode #6: Microsoft’s Next Evolution 

From Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) to Vertipaq to Power BI, Microsoft has a rich history of innovation and evolution in business intelligence. As data becomes an ever-increasing priority for organizations around the globe, Microsoft is now focused on the future with the launch of Microsoft Fabric, a unified software as a service (SaaS) solution which integrates all your data in one place. Fabric makes data management easier and more accessible for every user who works with data. 

Guest: Amir Netz, CTO of Microsoft’s Intelligence Platform, including Power BI, Synapse, and more. 

Episode #7: What Happened to Data Marts 

Accessing data faster, more easily, and in a format of their choice is an increasing priority for business users. In the new Microsoft Fabric unified ecosystem, data warehousing, data lakehouse, and data marts coexist to enable users to choose how they analyze and work with data at scale. Priya Sathy shares insights into the future of data marts, the role data warehouses play, and what you can expect from Microsoft Fabric in the coming years. 

Guest: Priya Sathy, Leads Microsoft’s Azure Synapse SQL and Synapse Data Warehouse in Microsoft Fabric.

Episode #8: The Changing Faces of Data and Analytics 

Through actively incorporating the feedback of internal field sellers, engineers, and customers, Microsoft has been able to make huge strides in the development and success of the Power BI solution. Now with the introduction of Microsoft Fabric, another exciting shift is happening in the world of analytics. In this episode of Insights Tomorrow, Arun Ulag discusses his journey from being a field seller, through evolutions in Power BI, to the recent launch of the unified analytics solution, Microsoft Fabric. Arun also shares his insight and predictions for what lies ahead in this ever-evolving data and analytics landscape. 

Guest: Arun Ulag, Corporate Vice President of Azure Data. 

Epsiode #9: Patrick Takes the Hot Seat 

The data landscape is changing constantly, and as an expert in the space, our host Patrick LeBlanc is helping to document these changes and keep global data leaders updated on the latest developments and technologies. In this special episode of Insights Tomorrow, Product Marketing Manager Swetha Mannepalli interviews the interviewer, asking Patrick about his favorite moments from the podcast series and his predictions for what’s coming in data and AI. 

Guest: Swetha Mannepalli, Senior Product Marketing Manager. 

Episode #10: Finding Balance in Progress 

In today’s episode of Insights Tomorrow, Patrick LeBlanc and guest Kim Manis discuss the importance of balance and prioritization in both personal and professional lives. As the Director of Product, Microsoft Fabric & Power BI, Kim shares her experience in leading global teams, inspiring interns, driving success for innovative solutions, and saving space for the things she loves. 

Guest: Kim Manis, Microsoft’s Partner Director of Product Management, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Power BI. 

Learn more about the data landscape and Microsoft Fabric

• Check out the Insights Tomorrow podcast. 
• Explore more about Microsoft Fabric. 

The post Insights Tomorrow: A podcast for data enthusiasts  appeared first on Microsoft Fabric Blog.