Fusion Development: Bridging Azure & Power Platform

The dichotomy between "Developers" and "Business Users" is vanishing. Fusion Development is the methodology where professional developers, citizen developers, and IT professionals collaborate to deliver software solutions. It's about using the right tool for the job.

1. What is Fusion Development?

In a traditional model, business users write a spec, and developers build the app from scratch. In Fusion Development:

• Business Users build the UI and logic in Power Apps (Low Code).
• Pro Developers build the complex backend logic and APIs in Azure (Pro Code).

2. Extending Power Platform with Azure

Power Platform is natively extensible. When you hit a limitation in low-code, you drop into code-first Azure services.

Azure Functions & Custom Connectors

Need to perform complex calculation, cryptographic operations, or connect to a legacy Mainframe? A developer can write a C# or Python Azure Function. This function is then wrapped in a Custom Connector, making it available for the Power App maker to drag and drop just like any other data source.

3. Azure API Management (APIM)

For enterprise governance, all internal APIs can be managed via APIM. With a single click, APIs managed in APIM can be exported to the Power Platform environment, respecting security policies and throttling limits.

4. PCF (Power Apps Component Framework)

Sometimes standard UI controls (buttons, text inputs) aren't enough. Professional developers can specific UI components using TypeScript and React via the PCF. These code-components can then be reused by business users across multiple apps.

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