In today's world of fast paced change and increasing reliance on data it is important to focus on the other side of complexity. Make sure your data is aligned and accessible using the least complex and yet highest quality solution.

Seamless integrations that are technically put into place with considerations such as. 

1) Is the data secure?

2) Is there quality and data review processes in place so that the data is clean and accurate?

3) Can you access the data at the desired speeds?

The Microsoft Stack of technologies continues to deepen and is sometimes hard to explain. Take for instance the "Common Data Universe", Dataverse. More than a Microsoft SQL Server database with layers and layers of role-based entitlement, external security tying deeply into the entire infrastructure using Entra (formerly Active Directory) and so many choices. Choices such as being able to split the database using Business Units which can significantly increase performance. 

If you take Dataverse and then consider that Azure extends the options, you end up with so many technically beautiful possibilities 

• Azure Data Factory: Ingest and transform data from Microsoft and non-Microsoft sources. Azure Data Factory is a managed cloud service that's built for complex hybrid and non-hybrid extract-transform-load (ETL), and data integration projects. Introduction to Azure Data Factory - Azure Data Factory | Microsoft Learn to read more.

• Azure Synapse Analytics: A bit of a learning curve for the technical folks (seen that first hand more than once), but Azure Synapse can be used to create a customer data lake and analyze large datasets.  "Azure Synapse brings together the best of SQL technologies used in enterprise data warehousing, Spark technologies used for big data, Data Explorer for log and time series analytics, Pipelines for data integration and ETL/ELT, and deep integration." retrieved from What is Azure Synapse Analytics? - Azure Synapse Analytics | Microsoft Learn What more do you need? 

ACCESS TO APIs, Of course! 

• Azure API Management: Securely expose data services. Azure API Management. "Azure API Management is made up of an API gateway, a management plane, and a developer portal, with features designed for different audiences in the API ecosystem. These components are Azure-hosted and fully managed by default." Azure API Management - Overview and key concepts | Microsoft Learn Not always required, but really good to know about as the technology options either are layered or are in parallel.