Are Microsoft killing Azure?

They’ve just announced the retiring of the DP-203 Azure Data Engineering Cert - last date is March 31 2025.

They’re pushing hard their new Cert - Exam DP-700: Data Engineering Using Ms Fabric.

Nice YouTube explanation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoVqlqiLtXE&list=WL&index=4

Reddit discussion on topic:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataengineering/comments/1i5kv4o/dp203_retired_what_now/

Just as a recap, Fabric bundles together all of the Azure data engineering capability, and “easily” allows for all the different components to communicate with each other - Synapse, Data Factory, Databricks, Power BI etc.

As a background, I’m certified in Azure and Power BI – I just finished a 60-day Fabric trial – I found it to be buggy. It's like a beta version, and I wouldn’t use it in a production environment.

Lists of all the bugs in Fabric:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftFabric/comments/1fput1m/to_microsoft_with_love/

Microsoft can of course fix all these problems but, it may take 2 to 5 years. In 2 years, I’ll have another look at it.

The pricing of Fabric is confusing, and the cheapest options are magnitudes more expensive then just using the Azure elements you really need. Below are the cheapest options-

My last 2 contracts, I set everything up on Azure. Next contract, I’ll be using AWS. (I’ve never used Google Cloud; I’ll have to learn it)

Back to the title of this post –

Yes, I believe they will.

What I think they’re trying to do – Make everything no code.
The services that Azure provide will be integrated seamlessly, the individual names like “Synapse” will be retired, and everything will be known as “Fabric”.

If Microsoft could actually achieve this, then yes that would be fun to play around with.

Azure as it is, will be around for several more years, but there won’t be new investments made into it.
I’m personally pivoting to all AWS, Snowflake, Databricks for data engineering.

Power BI is part of Fabric, but it is also a stand alone application. This will continue it’s upward trajectory, and is my go to data visualisation tool.

Cheers Shano.