Conversations with Julie Koesmarno, Olivier Matrat, Aaron Nelson, Seth Bauer and Robert Bruckner captured in video interviews below…
Continuing my video blog series of interviews from PASS Summit, I had the opportunity to catch-up with several Microsoft BI and Data Platform industry leaders amid the crowds and between sessions. Stay tuned to this station for many more interviews and insider information about the Microsoft Business Intelligence and Data Platform.
I caught up with Julie Koesmarno in the Community Zone, a few days after travelling together on the SQL Train (aka “Oregon SQL Party Train to Seattle”) from Oregon SQL Saturday the weekend before Summit. She’s been a non-stop community advocate for several years, and continues to speak at events all over. Julie was an Business Intelligence consultant and user group leader in Australia and Southern California before joining Microsoft as technical evangelist. You might recognize her from the executive demonstration during the opening keynote at PASS Summit last year.
Olivier Matrat, Principal Program Manager (that’s Microsoft job title code for “in charge of a lot of important stuff”), talks about how they are hard at work integrating several products in the “Power *” suite. This is the first time I’d heard of all the “Power…” prefixed product names unofficially referred to as “Power Star”, but it makes perfect sense. Olivier said that we can expect to see tighter integration between tools like Power BI, Flow and Power Apps with more embeddable features for developers and solution integrators.
Aaron Nelson, Data Platform MVP and hard-core PowerShell enthusiast, spoke about some new capabilities he presented in his session about PowerShell for Business Intelligence. The new REST API will let Power BI and report server admins orchestrate server migrations and task automation with PowerShell CmdLets. He seized the opportunity to promote the PASS PowerShell virtual group that he helps manage, at SQLPS.IO. I’ve promised Aaron a follow-up post to demonstrate how the REST API works with PowerShell and the new MSBuild integration, so please watch my blog for that in the next few days.
I chatted with Seth Bauer, BI consultant and Data Platform MVP, on the escalator in the Washington State Convention Center between sessions. Seth has been on the front lines of the Power BI advisors community since the product launched. He cites Q&A Natural Language and Explain the Difference as examples of the most compelling features. He participates in PASS Summit for professional networking and to stay current with BI technologies.
Robert Bruckner is a Senior Architect on the Power BI team and long-time developer lead for Reporting Services. He told me that there are many exciting capabilities on the horizon for Power BI and other integrated reporting technologies that are still under NDA. He mentioned a recent announcement that the On-premises gateway will soon support single sign-on, delegation, load balancing and high-availability. It is truly exciting to see such emphasis on enterprise-scale capabilities for these tools.
