Quo vadis, Power Platform?
October 2025
I’ve been working with the Power Platform for six years now, and for the past few months, I’ve been back in customer projects. To be honest, I imagined my transition from Learning & Development (L&D) back into Power Platform delivery to be a lot more romantic. I thought I’d be building cool Power Apps and living that “Power Platform dream.” that I taught people for many years. Reality, however, hit differently: I hardly build any apps. When I do get to focus on the Power Platform, it’s mostly on governance topics. Important work, of course (and critical even) but it’s something that works in the background, not something the end user ever sees (which is good, best governance is when you don’t notice anything).1
Why did I expect my return to consulting to be romantic? Because I made one big mistake: I assumed things would still be the way they were before 2020, when I shift my focus from day-to-day consulting to L&D. But the reality is different now. Those long-running Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement projects I used to know are gone, well, at least for me. Projects especially in the Power Platform world are handled differently!
Both a blessing and a curse: When you have such broad knowledge of Power Platform and Copilot, you are usually included in strategic discussions within the company. Microsoft is also continuing to develop the Power Platform with... you’ll never guess... maybe a hint... It starts with A and... and ends with I... that’s right, AI, you’re so good! Times have changed: AI is everywhere, client budgets are tighter, and Microsoft is encouraging customers to do more themselves with AI-powered tools.
Technology came to replace (other) technology
The idea that technology is being replaced by the next wave of technology is nothing new. While I was on vacation, my colleague Sean Astrakhan posted about how Canvas Apps and Power Automate are changing, and asked: who will even need Power Fx in the age of AI? Others in the community have raised similar questions.
Before my vacation, I was a guest on the German Power Dudes podcast (shoutout to Janosch Grube, Matthias Schmitz, and Dmitry Muray). A fun episode, though I somehow ended up with the nickname Conan the Destroyer for crushing a few dreams by bluntly telling customers what Copilot can and can’t do.
The dudes also asked me the big question:
Where do I think the Power Platform is headed? Does Power Fx have a future when we have vibe coding and generative pages?
Technology always replaces older technology when the time is right. Power Fx was introduced not just to bring structure to coding2 in Canvas Apps, but to become the language of the Power Platform, across Power Pages, Power Automate, even Power BI. At least, that’s how I saw it. I hoped for one unified language. Instead, we still have JavaScript and C# for Dataverse and Model-Driven Apps, Liquid for Power Pages, Expressions for Power Automate, and DAX/M for Power BI. Power Fx could have unified it all, but now AI has stepped in, translating natural language into whichever syntax is needed. That sounds great, but I’ve also come back down to earth a bit: it’s not pure romance or hype anymore. I entered realistic mode!
What I believe in, what the Power Platform is
And so, the “Conan the Destroyer” side of me emerged in that podcast. (I’m still waiting for the AI-generated picture of me with Conan’s body and my head from my Power Dudes friends.. just to believe I could look like that someday 😁) But seriously: the Power Platform was always meant to empower the “ordinary” people in organizations, help them get work done faster, and now, benefit from AI. That’s what the AI Builder was about back in 2019. The joy of quickly creating an automation or building a useful report, that’s the magic of Power Platform. It’s the Knight Rider K.I.T.T. for the business user: there to help, always at your side.
Of course, you can run massive enterprise projects on the Power Platform. Microsoft has strengthened governance enormously over the past years.3 But let’s be honest: do end users really want to maintain all of that themselves? It’s like Lego: you can buy a ready-made set like Dynamics 365 Customer Service: Mature, feature-rich, maybe even more than you need. Or you can get a box of random Lego bricks (yes YES, I mean the Power Platform!) and build exactly what you want.
The catch? You’re responsible for everything yourself. If you’ve got the manpower and architecture discipline, great. But with the constant Microsoft updates for the platform, things will break - especially now that Copilot introduces changes at high speed.
For me, the Power Platform remains the tool for the “small” use cases. It’s where champions (formerly known as the nerds) emerge within departments, building small apps that make colleagues’ lives easier and taking workload off IT. Microsoft is layering in AI, and yes, the technology is shifting. But at the end of the day, the mission hasn’t changed: helping people get more done.
That’s still the romance I believe in.
If you’re wondering what I actually do most of the time, it’s Copilot, Copilot Studio, and strategic discussions with customers.
I would like to apologize in advance to everyone who is already laughing at my use of the term “coding” for Power Fx 😂
Can we talk about how scattered the governance switches are across the platform?!? That rant will have to wait for another time 🤔