Why?

Before I deep dive on specific topics, it may be relevant on how I picture this platform. At the beginning it was positioned more as a part of Microsoft Dynamics365 than of Microsoft Office365: The Microsoft Power Platform – Empowering millions of people to achieve more – Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog. Since 2021 a tipping point may have been reaced 😉.

What?

As a part of the Microsoft Intelligent Business Applications Platform, it started out as a more of a functional platform part of the whole Microsoft Technology Stack than a platform on its own. The tools in the Power Platform at the start:

1. PowerBI: tool to Analyze
   
2. PowerApps: tool to Act
   
3. Microsoft Flow: tool to Automate
   

During the years the Power Platform has achieved its own place in the Microsoft Stack with a clear architecture:

1. Power BI still to Analyze data
2. Power Apps still to Act with data
3. Power Automate (previously known as Microsoft Flow) to Automate on data
4. Power Virtual Agents to Assist with data

How

These tools combined would be the way to support and optimize (business) processes with information stored in and coming from any type of data source (not just Azure, Dynamics365 or Office365). When starting it looked like this in my mind:

Because the data can be anywhere (On-Prem, other Cloud Solutions etc), the power really is with the (end) users!

With the most recent Microsoft Ignite session this architecture was shared:

The Power Platform being a very important building block in the Microsoft Cloud 😎

“Applications built by the business, for the business”