If you’ve been following Microsoft’s recent press releases, chances are you’ll have been exposed to the term “Common Data Service” (CDS). Read on as we shed light on the exact nature of CDS and what it can mean to your business.
Back in November 2016, Microsoft released their Common Data Service to general availability. In a nutshell, CDS is Microsoft’s attempt at providing a solution to counter the time and effort customers are spending to bring together disparate apps, services and solutions. At its most basic level, it provides a way to connect disparate systems around a focal point of your data. The intention is that Microsoft will provide the “heavy lifting” required to ensure the data flows back and forth as required.
To achieve this, Microsoft has defined a set of core business entities and then built them into what is known as the Common Data Model (CDM). For example, they have exposed entities for managing data around Accounts, Employees, Products, Opportunities and Sales Orders (for a full list see: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/developer/common-data-service/reference/about-entity-reference). Where there isn’t an existing entity to suit a business requirement, Microsoft has made the CDM extensible, which allows you to add to your organisation’s instance of the CDM to meet your needs. As your organisation adapts and changes your CDS instance, Microsoft will then monitor this and look for common patterns amongst the business community that it will use to modify and extend the standard CDS.
Microsoft is committed to making their applications CDS aware and is working with their partners to get third party applications to interact effectively with the CDS.
When establishing CDS integration from an organisational use perspective, it should ideally be a simple configuration of a connector from a source application to the CDS, aligning its data entities with the reciprocal entities within the CDS. This will ensure that as products are changed to meet business needs over time, the impact should be almost negligible to other systems. This negates the need for an organisation to spend an excessive amount of time ensuring the correct architecting of a solution in bringing together disparate apps and siloed information. This can now be handled through the CDS.
Since its release in 2016, CDS has evolved with Microsoft recently announcing the release of two new services; Common Data Service for Apps (CDS for Apps) and Common Data Service for Analytics (CDS for Analytics).
CDS for Apps was released in January 2018 with CDS for Analytics expected for release in second quarter 2018. As a snapshot of how the various “pieces” fit together, Figure 1 provides a logical view of how the services will interact.
Common Data Service for Apps
CDS for Apps was initially designed for businesses to engage with their data on a low-code/no-code basis through Microsoft’s PowerApps product. This allows a business to rapidly develop scalable, secure and feature-rich applications.
For organisations needing further enhancement, Microsoft offers developer extensions to engage with CDS for Apps.
Common Data Service for Analytics
CDS for Analytics was designed to function with Power BI as the visual reporting visual product. Similarly to the way CDS for Apps is extensible by developers, CDS for Analytics will also provide extensibility options.
Figure 2 below provides the current logic model for how CDS for Analytics will integrate.
Business Benefits
Implementing the CDS for Apps and CDS for Analytics will enable you to be able to easily capture data and then accelerate your ability to provide insights into your business data.
To assist in this acceleration, Microsoft and expose data, as their partners, will be building industry specific apps that immediately surface deep insights to an organisation’s data. An initial example is currently being developed by Microsoft; Power BI for Sales Insights will address the maximisation of sales productivity by providing insights into which opportunities are at risk and where salespeople could be spending their time more efficiently.
The ease of development and portability of solutions aren’t possible, however, without having a standardised data model. By leveraging Microsoft’s new common data services and with the suite of Microsoft’s platform of products being CDS aware, utilisation of tools such as Azure Machine Learning and Azure Databricks for deeper analysis of your organisation’s data becomes transformational.
If you’d like to understand more about how to take advantage of the Common Data Service or for further discussion around how it can assist your business, please get in touch.