Recently, we have noticed a strong interest in the Power Platform Admin and Governance topic. Power Platform Admin and Governance, as part of the Power Platform Centre of Excellence, has existed for years. We created frameworks and training for our government customers. We ran workshops and did some work on it, but our platform management offerings weren’t as popular as our Power Platform implementations, so we accepted the loss and moved on.
In the last six months, we finally got customers asking for a training assessment, and the topic that was very difficult to “sell” has suddenly become hot. Riding that “shut up and take my money” wave is pleasant; don’t get me wrong. However, getting to the bottom of it is almost like solving a mystery. If we understand the reasons for the sudden popularity, we can offer customers better support and guidance and discover new business opportunities for us.
While going through the Microsoft books and materials, we discovered some points worth sharing, and I happily expanded them based on my knowledge and experience.
AI didn’t create the governance problem. It exposed it.
This is an easy one. AI magic may cause damage at scale, like a big silly puppy.
Before, badly built apps and automation only caused local damage. Not too serious to pay attention. Now, autonomous agents can access data, trigger automations, create records and even make decisions. It’s like getting a magnifying glass but not looking at things, but to execute. The problem you are looking at has grown big and scary, and now you are forced to do something about it.
The cost conversation has changed.
My favourite clean-up topic is a less favourite customer topic. Clean-up is not just about clarity; it’s also about costs. When abandoned jobs cost you money, it’s ouch, but you barely notice (as you run 100 VMs 24X7 at the same time, because the change is too complex, so you give up). What about AI credits? Copilot licenses? Agents using premium connectors? Dataverse capacity cost (and Microsoft deploying their AI records to your environments isn’t helping either)? When a cost becomes a COST- too big to be ignored.
Previously, your team needed to learn additional tools, install toolkits, continuously upgrade admin apps, and pay extra for licences to use them across the organisation.
Now that you have better monitoring for cost visibility and consumption control embedded in the Admin centre, what’s your excuse?
Organisations have accidentally built critical business systems.
This is cool. And this is true. We started with one of our biggest customers six years ago; we used Power Platform to bridge gaps and extend business-critical systems. Today, the apps and automation we built are business-critical systems in their own right. Our customer is not an exception. Today, in many organisations, governance, support, ownership, and disaster recovery for the once-upon-a-time “citizen dev” payroll workarounds, executive reporting workflows, and customer onboarding processes are less about control and more about business continuity.
Power Platform is becoming “enterprise IT”.
Logically following the previous point, something I struggled to explain for years: it’s not just for productivity. As with Microsoft first-party apps like Dynamics 365, Power Apps, and Power Automate flows people have been building all these years, at least some of it is enterprise software, and suddenly all the “enterprise IT” rules and policies apply to it. Now we’re talking
- ALM
- Monitoring
- Release management
- Support models
- Security
- Environment strategy
- Managed Environments
with a customer.
Before, somewhat of a grey area, now it needs proper attention from organisational IT and cyber.
Power Platform has moved from an emerging platform to an expected platform.
We call it “flooded the space”, when something needs to naturally expand in volume to get noticed. Over time, the platform was adopted both consciously and unconsciously by users. As they moved from organisation to organisation, they expect the platform just “be there” and “be available”. Again, not easy to ignore.
The CoE conversation is evolving.
My customer asked me another day: “Is the CoE dead?” No, but the purpose and the focus changed.
Previously, it was about finding apps, finding flows, counting makers.
Now it’s about understanding what’s built: apps, automations, agents; monitoring and taking care of what’s critical; measuring risks; managing lifecycle; managing costs.
Hope it all makes sense. Now, the bonus point was hidden like a pearl in a mother shell. It required some effort to be fetched and transformed into the actual thought.
A big shift from risks and compliance to enablement has happened.
The answer we had from the beginning, when a customer approached us with the request, was: “Let’s set up Power Platform management! We need it to enable automation and AI.” That’s it! Power Platform Admin and Governance risk and compliance Beast is transformed into a Prince Charming enabling organisational growth.
“Power Platform Governance Has Stopped Being About Governance”.
Because what customers are buying is:
- AI readiness
- Scalability
- Cost control
- Business continuity
- Platform sustainability
Governance is just the mechanism that delivers those outcomes. Governance is becoming a competitive advantage. The winners won’t necessarily be the companies with the most AI. The winners will be the companies that can safely deploy hundreds of AI solutions. Anyone can build an agent. Not everyone can manage 500 agents, 2,000 flows and hundreds of apps. Scale is now the differentiator.
So, if you are discovering Power Platform and its Admin and Governance side, it’s about time.