PowerApps & the Dev Democracy

Last week I experienced two firsts. I went to Vegas for the first time, and I attended Microsoft Inspire for the first time. I know, I know - surely I should have done both before? But firstly, I am not big on stag-doos and secondly I usually attend Microsoft GEPS (the Global Education Partner Summit) - but now that Hable is working across Government & Commercial sectors as well as Edu, I thought that the time was right to do Inspire (formally known as the "Worldwide Partner Conference" or WPC).

For those uninitiated in the ways of Microsoft partner-land, Inspire is when they bring thousands of partners together from all over the world, to hear about Microsoft's plans for the coming financial year (FY20 started on July 1st) and to network with both Microsoft staff and one another. At the same time, Microsoft run their "Ready" conference for internal staff, in the same city - so you end up with over 30 thousand people in Vegas talking about all things Microsoft for a week. For those uninitiated in the ways of Vegas - it was 45 degrees and people seem to drink and gamble a lot. I didn't do much of either took, but did take Mrs R to the Grand Canyon for our anniversary! #winner

Anyway - there are loads of post-Inspire blogs about SharePoint updates and SQL Hyperscale architecture, but this isn't one of them. This blog is about people and tech, which are Hable's specialist subjects. At one point during Satya Nadella's keynote I got a bit worried. Our mission at Hable is "change how people feel about technology" but if I'm honest - I have never been that interested in how the platforms actually work, or what they are built on. Steve Ballmer's famous "developers, developers, developers" rant was not completely lost on me - but I just never got excited about it. So when Satya started off his keynote with a whole section on "Tech intensity" I wondered for a second whether this was going to be worth the 11 hour flight. However, what he said actually inspired me. What he was really talking about was a world in which every organisation will be reliant on software to deliver success and that organisations should look inwards, to their own people, in order to build that software.

I'm sure some boffin has posted the exact transcript of Satya's keynote, but here's the version I heard:

"In 2030, 10% of GDP will come from the technology sector - which is important for Microsoft and their partners. But the real opportunity is with the non-tech sector, where 90% of GDP (currently 95%) will come from. All companies will need to build their own software or apps to solve their specific business problems. That does not mean that every coffee shop or clothing manufacturer will hire lots of developers - it means that people in those businesses will need simple tools that let them build their own apps - and that's why the Microsoft Power Platform is so important."

When I first heard about "the Power Platform" I could not say it without putting on a Batman voice. I knew about Power BI, but what was this PowerApps thing that everyone kept telling me about? Well at Inspire, during that keynote, it really clicked for me.

The thing that all Hable customers have in common is Office 365. We change the way people feel about technology, by helping their organisations get beyond email and understand the more powerful parts of the Microsoft cloud. So when we started wanting to build our own IP, the most obvious thing to do was build an app that used Office 365 as a platform (which is how Review365 was born). But to do that, we needed to hire developers, because we did not have the skills in-house to build an app, despite having some very clever "IT Pro's" at #TeamHable

The vision that Satya laid out in his keynote, is that companies should not need to hire expensive Dev teams in order to build apps or "line of business" software. PowerApps and Flow offer a simple set of services and connectors that work with Office 365 and let organisations build their own custom apps. They are both right there, in the Waffle! Go on, sign into your web-mail and have a look now. Microsoft gave great examples of companies like Autoglass who have encouraged "non-technical" staff to digitise their business processes using PowerApps. It's like the platform is breaking down the dark art of software and making it accessible to everyone.

The Power Platform is going to democratise the development process.

So would I go to Vegas again? Not sure. Would I fly for 11 hours to hear Satya again? Absolutely. There is no conflict between our mission to focus on people, and the Microsoft mission to kick off the Dev Democracy. In fact, the two things go hand in hand.

#PowerToThePeople #TeamHable