Microsoft PowerApps is a SaaS (Software as a Service) service offering allowing for intelligent business apps to be built extremely easily and fast that connect and integrate data across the cloud. The easy to use User Interface (UI) of PowerApps makes it possible for Business Users to start creating an App and share it with others without writing a single line of source code. Additionally, apps built with PowerApps will run on almost all operating systems; iPhone, Windows Phone, Windows 10, with Android support coming in the future.

What PowerApps Offers

PowerApps tremendously lowers the bar to getting a simple app created, deployed, and usable in a really short amount of time. While PowerApps isn’t really meant to be used for building out a replacement for a CRM system or Inventory management system, it is meant to be able to connect to any Web API’s being exposed by those types of systems allowing additional functionality to be easily integrated.

With the Microsoft PowerApps Enterprise service you get the following major features:

• Easy to use tool for Business Users to create and connect apps to both cloud and corporate APIs that can be easily shared amongst others within the organization.
• Easily build Web and Mobile Apps for your business that integrates Single Sign-On (SSO) to corporate data and services
• Complete security access management using any existing corporate API with Azure Active Directory integration.
• Rapid creation of Apps using CRUD APIs for many popular, third-party services in the cloud, as well as on-premises services
• Full capabilities of Azure App Service – Can host as many Web, Mobile, Logic and API Apps as your business needs within the fully managed App Service Environment.

Additionally the user interface for Microsoft PowerApps is modeled after Microsoft Office. This mean a familiar interface to both Word and Excel is available when using PowerApps to easily create powerful, cloud connected Business Apps. All without requiring a single line of code to write!

How it compares to MS Access?

This is a lot of the promise that Microsoft Access delivered in the past. However, Microsoft Access wasn’t cloud connected, wasn’t the most friendly to have MANY users, and most importantly Microsoft Access apps didn’t run on mobile devices.

Microsoft PowerApps is a really innovative, new product from Microsoft that is aimed to allow Business Users (not necessarily developers) to create and distribute powerful, cloud connected business apps through out the organization.

See it for yourself

To try PowerApps today, go to http://PowerApps.com and signup to join the Preview

Also, to learn more about Microsoft PowerApps and to see it in action, please open the following links to some short videos demonstrating the power of Microsoft PowerApps:

• PowerApps 101 w/ Scott Hanselman and Karthik Bharathy
• PowerApps 102 – Creating apps from templates
• PowerApps 103 – Creating apps from existing data
• Why PowerApps? with Bill Staples and Scott Hanselman

The PowerApps client app can be downloaded for free from both the Windows Store and Apple App Store.

Attribution: Some images in this post were originally posted at http://PowerApps.com

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