The transformation through AI hinges on mastering business context, data governance, and a seamless platform that integrates data, metrics, models, and agents across Fabric, OneLake, Power BI, Copilot, and Azure SQL.

Microsoft joined Apache Ossie, an incubation-stage effort to standardize semantic model exchange across analytics, AI, and BI platforms to ease data accessibility for AI tools.

Fabric is moving toward production-ready status with connections to Fabric data stores, SQL databases, lakehouses, and Power BI models, without data duplication, including a TypeScript backend, Secret Store, PostgreSQL support, private access by default, and built-in metrics.

This shift signals tighter data-connection controls and a strategic evolution under CEO Nadella toward a more open, interoperable ecosystem, balancing openness with security.

New capabilities include the Fabric data engineering agent, Real-Time Intelligence copilots, Eventhouse task automation, and Fabric IQ enhancements to generate ontologies and reusable metrics, plus natural language rule definitions to align business meaning.

Fabric IQ integrates with Microsoft Copilot to operate from a shared organizational business view, with Copilot availability in Copilot Chat and Copilot Cowork and upcoming Code experience integration via Frontier; Power BI models inform Copilot responses and actions.

Microsoft emphasizes a community-driven evolution of Power BI, using Ossie to enable reuse of semantic context across ecosystems without duplicating data or logic.

Updates include on-demand billing for computing, zero provisioning of Fabric and OneLake, Database Hub for centralized control across SQL Server, Azure SQL, PostgreSQL, Cosmos DB, and SQL on Fabric; upcoming SQL and PostgreSQL database agents; Azure SQL Database Hyperscale with DiskANN for semantic search; and SQL Server on Azure On-Premise for hybrid scenarios.

Industry context notes mixed adoption by peers, with Google showing interest but not consistently listed among members, reflecting a broader shift toward heterogeneous stacks for AI and data tools.

Fabric IQ acts as a shared intelligence layer linking OneLake data, Power BI semantic models, and business context from ontologies and real-time insights to help AI understand business meaning, not just read data.

OneLake is becoming an open data network that connects data across clouds and platforms, supplying necessary business context for copilots and agents to deliver relevant responses and actions.

At the Fabric + SQL European Community Conference in Barcelona, Microsoft unveiled a unified data, AI, and business processes vision focused on trusted data, shared definitions, and governance via Fabric IQ and OneLake.