Recently, I was on a call with a good friend and former colleague, just to exchange some thoughts, knowledge and ideas. We shared some things we’re working on and what we think of the evolvement of technology in the Era of AI – with the launch of Microsoft Fabric versus the technology we were used to work with like Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Analysis Services etcetera. We though, there should be a word or term to describe technologies might no longer fit in future proof architectures. Therefore, we want to introduce the term: “Anchored Technology.” In this blog I will further elaborate on the thoughts behind this and what it actually means for us.

Where did it all start?

For many years, I used to work together with Dave Ruijter. When he started freelancing, we logically didn’t work together as much as we used to do before, but we stayed in contact all the time. We’re still good friends and regularly brainstorm and share findings form our daily work.

And so we did recently. We were on the phone talking about technologies we use nowadays in our projects, versus the technologies we used a few years ago. We discussed till what extend we see fit for Microsoft Fabric in our current projects and how that affects previously used technologies like Azure Synapse Analytics for example. A few years ago, we even run full day workshops at various events about combining Synapse and Power BI in a better together story. But we have to conclude that our perspective to this combination of technology has completely changed since then.

So, what is Anchored Technology?

It’s not only Azure Synapse Analytics that we’ve been discussing about. There are plenty of other technologies in the same category, for example Azure Analysis Services. Basically, since Microsoft announced that Power BI Premium would become (and currently is if you ask me) the superset of Analysis Services, at that point no real new features have been brought into the product. Similarly with Synapse Analytics, since the launch of Fabric you can debate where we will see new features coming to Synapse Analytics at all. Although, the products used as examples above are still alive and in support.

Where did the term Anchored come from? Well, we thought of a ship that has let it’s anchor down and from that point it doesn’t move anymore and stays in exactly that place. We think that could be a good analogy for technology that doesn’t move any longer and basically is stable but no further feature updates are expected.

Why do we need a term for this anyway?

Every now and then, I still come across clients using old technology. Usually, the conversations I have with them are around modernization and migration. They want to be ready for the future and the technology must fit the new requirements that today’s world asks for.

However, sometimes there are also clients that ask to implement a technology, where I would personally would not opt for. Recently, I had a client asking if we could help them implementing a data platform based on Azure Synapse Analytics. I asked why Synapse and the argument was that they wanted a stable technology and Microsoft Fabric was too new. I could understand that organizations might be hesitant to implement Fabric already right now. But I truly doubt if investing in a technology like Synapse would be a good option.

Don’t get me wrong here, I don’t want to say, you should move away from Synapse immediately in case you are already using it. But for every green-field project, I would advise to pick a technology that still has a future and is in active development. For anchored technologies, we can maybe expect some security updates, but that will probably be it.

In conversations like these, it would help if we can categorize technologies. For example, categories like active development and anchored will help to prepare for a future-proof platform architecture. Next to that, we obviously also have to keep our eyes open for the maturity and enterprise readiness for technology. Anchored solely categorizes the technology in the aspect of development.