Microsoft Flow, PowerApps, and Azure Functions help create cloud apps quickly and easily

Kareem Anderson

With most data content moving towards cloud storage and computing, it seems it was only a matter of time before the applications that trafficked this content would themselves become a product of cloud development. Accordingly, Microsoft is looking to help developers and businesses make the leap into cloud development by using its suite of software that includes Microsoft Flow, Microsoft PowerApps and Azure Functions.

By incorporating the gamut of services, Microsoft believes customers can quickly design their workflow and execute changes with greater flexibility. As James Staten, Microsoft’s chief strategist of Cloud + Enterprise would put it, “This is potentially a seismic shift in how we think about enterprise computing.”

Now that Microsoft Flow, Microsoft PowerApps, and Azure Functions are in preview for select customers, Microsoft can get early telemetry on how the future of enterprising computing will evolve as well as offering a helping hand in delivering solutions that address company support, contact, on-premises, or cloud-based management.

Using Microsoft’s full stack of cloud-based computing options for the enterprise, companies can unburden themselves with having to spend time and resources on worrying about servers thanks to Microsoft Power Apps or creating sophisticated processing workflows by using Azure Functions instead.

Think about it: with PowerApps your business users can quickly create apps, and with Microsoft Flow, create business processes with a few clicks. With Flow’s bigger cousin, Azure Logic Apps, you can quickly connect to any industry-standard enterprise data source such as your local ERP system, a data warehouse, support tools and many others via open protocols and interfaces such as EDIFACT/X.12, AS2, or XML. And you can easily connect to a wide variety of social media and internet assets, like Twitter, Dropbox, Slack, Facebook and many others. With Functions, you can catch events generated by Logic Apps and make decisions in real time.”

Microsoft PowerApps Common Data Model
Microsoft PowerApps Common Data Model

Microsoft further pitches the preview services as “Lego blocks,” meaning that they work independent of one another but when combined, swapped out or interchanged, offer greater value to customers. Once again, Microsoft is positioning its cloud apps as a necessity for an evolving enterprise industry looking to prioritize productivity and ease-of-use.