Evolutionary History of Microsoft Fabric - Spreadsheets to Lakehouse

While some may believe that Microsoft Fabric was created in May 2023, this presentation reviews over two decades of the products leading up to Fabric. You've all heard of SQL Server and Excel, but what roles did ProClarity, Panorama, and Sharepoint play in the evolution of Power BI and Fabric? How did Microsoft analytic tools emerge from on-premises and begin existing in the Cloud? In order to explain the context of the tools currently in Fabric, this presentation attempts to provide an entertaining history of how Fabric evolved from simpler tools. For those new to Fabric, understanding the past provides content for the present and future. This is a recorded version of a presentation that I gave at SQL Saturday Minnesota 2023. UPDATES: 1. I was originally mistaken that Datazen visuals were the basis for Power BI visuals, and have removed that portion of the video. The Power BI visuals were created by a Microsoft team. 2. I was notified by a viewer that the slide shows PowerPivot suddenly appearing as part of Excel, when the core engine was originally developed by the Analysis Services team. Note that the content of this video is solely created by me, and is not endorsed by my employer. Content is not 100% correct, but it was the best I could do with the information that I had available. MENU 00:00 - Intro 07:14 - SQL Server lineage 10:50 - Old SQL Server slides 13:01 - Sharepoint and Excel lineage 16:28 - Old ProClarity, Excel, PowerPivot, & Sharepoint slides 20:44 - Power BI SaaS lineage 23:10 - Azure Synapse & PaaS lineage 25:05 - Fabric & the Cloud Singularity 31:34 - Value of Fabric SaaS vs PaaS 32:57 - Outro