November 3, 2025 • 23 mins
Opening: The Cost AmbushYou thought Dataverse was included, didn’t you? You installed Power Apps, connected your SharePoint list, and then—surprise!—a message popped up asking for premium licensing. Congratulations. You’ve just discovered the subtle art of Microsoft’s “not technically a hidden fee.”Your Power Apps project, born innocent as a digital form replacement, is suddenly demanding a subscription model that could fund a small village. You didn’t break anything. You just connected the wrong data source. And Dataverse, bless its enterprise heart, decided you must now pay for the privilege of doing things correctly.Here’s the trap: everyone assumes Dataverse “comes with” Microsoft 365. After all, you already pay for Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, even Viva because someone said “collaboration.” So naturally, Dataverse should be part of the same family. Nope. It’s the fancy cousin—they show up at family reunions but invoice you afterward.So, let’s address the uncomfortable truth: Dataverse can double or triple your Power Apps cost if you don’t know how it’s structured. It’s powerful—yes. But it’s not automatically the right choice. The same way owning a Ferrari is not the right choice for your morning coffee run.Today we’re dissecting the Dataverse cost illusion—why your budget explodes, which licensing myths Microsoft marketing quietly tiptoes around, and the cheaper setups that do 80% of the job without a single “premium connector.” And stay to the end, because I’m revealing one cost-cutting secret Microsoft will never put in a slide deck. Spoiler: it’s legal, just unprofitable for them.So let’s begin where every finance headache starts: misunderstood features wrapped in optimistic assumptions.Section 1: The Dataverse Delusion—Why Projects Go Over BudgetHere’s the thing most people never calculate: Dataverse carries what I call an invisible premium. Not a single line item says “Surprise, this costs triple,” but every part of it quietly adds a paywall. First you buy your Power Apps license—fine. Then you learn that the per-app plan doesn’t cover certain operations. Add another license tier. Then you realize storage is billed separately—database, file, and log categories that refuse to share space. Each tier has a different rate, measured in gigabytes and regret.And of course, you’ll need environments—plural—because your test version shouldn’t share a backend with production. Duplicate one environment, and watch your costs politely double. Create a sandbox for quality assurance, and congratulations—you now have a subscription zoo. Dataverse makes accountants nostalgic for Oracle’s simplicity.Users think they’re paying for an ordinary database. They’re not. Dataverse isn’t “just a database”; it’s a managed data platform wrapped in compliance layers, integration endpoints, and table-level security policies designed for enterprises that fear audits more than hackers. You’re leasing a luxury sedan when all you needed was a bicycle with gears.Picture Dataverse as that sedan: leather seats, redundant airbags, telemetry everywhere. Perfect if you’re driving an international logistics company. Utterly absurd if you just need to manage vacation requests. Yet teams justify it with the same logic toddlers use for buying fireworks: “it looks impressive.”Cost escalation happens silently. You start with ten users on one canvas app; manageable. Then another department says, “Can we join?” You add users, which multiplies licensing. Multiply environments for dev, test, and prod. Add connectors to keep data synced with other systems. Suddenly your “internal form” costs more than your CRM.And storage—oh, the storage. Dataverse divides its hoard into three categories: database, file, and log. The database covers your structured tables. The file tier stores attachments you promised nobody would upload but they always do. Then logs track every activity because, apparently, you enjoy paying for your own audit trail. Each category bills independently, so a single Power App can quietly chew through capacity like a bored hamster eating cables.Now sprinkle API limits. Every action against Dataverse—create, read, update, delete—counts toward a throttling quota. When you cross it, automation slows or outright fails. You can “solve” that by upgrading users to higher-tier licenses. Delightful, isn’t it? Pay to unthrottle your own automation.These invisible charges cascade into business pain. Budgets burst, adoption stalls, and the IT department questions every low-code project submitted henceforth. Users retreat to their beloved Excel sheets, muttering that “low-code” was high-cost all along. Leadership grows suspicious of anything branded ‘Power,’ because the bill certainly was.But before we condemn Dataverse entirely, it’s worth noting: this complexity exists because Dataverse is doing a lot behind the scenes. Role-based security, relational integrity, transactional consistency across APIs—things SharePoint Lists simply pretend to do.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You thought data Verse was included, didn't you. You installed
power Apps, connected your SharePoint list, and then surprise, a
message popped up asking for premium licensing. Congratulations, You've just
discovered the subtle art of Microsoft's not technically a hidden fee.
Your Power Apps project, born innocent as a digital form replacement,
is suddenly demanding a subscription model that could fund a
small village. You didn't break anything, You just connected the
(00:22):
wrong data source, and data Verse, bless its enterprise heart,
decided you must now pay for the privilege of doing
things correctly. Here's the trap. Everyone assumes data Verse comes
with Microsoft three sixty five. After all, you already pay
for Exchange, SharePoint teams, even Viva because someone said collaboration,
so naturally data Verse should be part of the same family. Nope,
it's the fancy cousin. They show up at family reunions
(00:44):
but invoice you afterward. So let's address the uncomfortable truth.
Data Verse can double or triple your power Apps cost
if you don't know how it's structured. It's powerful, yes,
but it's not automatically the right choice. The same way
owning a Ferrari is not the right choice for your
morning coffee run. Today we're dissecting the data verse cost illusion,
why your budget explodes, which licensing myths Microsoft Marketing quietly
(01:05):
tiptoes around, and the cheaper setups that do eighty percent
of the job without a single premium connector. And stay
to the end because I'm revealing one cost cutting secret.
Microsoft will never put in a slide deck spoiler. It's legal,
just unprofitable for them. So let's begin where every finance
headache starts. Misunderstood features wrapped in optimistic assumptions, the data
verse delusion why projects go over budget. Here's the thing
(01:28):
most people never calculate. Data verse carries what I call
an invisible premium, not a single line item says surprise,
this costs triple, but every part of it quietly adds
a paywall. First you buy your power apps license. Fine,
Then you learn that the per app plan doesn't cover
certain operations. Add another license tier. Then you realize storage
is built separately database, file and log categories that refuse
(01:49):
to share space. Each tier has a different rate measured
in gigabytes and regret. And of course you'll need environments
plural because your test version shouldn't share a back end
with production, duplicate one environ and watch your costs politely
double create a sandbox for quality assurance, and congratulations, you
now have a subscription Zoo. Data Verse makes accountants nostalgic
for Oracle simplicity. Users think they're paying for an ordinary database,
(02:12):
they're not. Data Verse isn't just a database. It's a
managed data platform, wrapped in compliance layers, integration endpoints, and
table level security policies designed for enterprises that fear audits
more than hackers. You're leasing a luxury sedan when all
you needed was a bicycle with gears. Picture data Verse
as that saddan leather seats, redundant airbags, telemetry everywhere perfect
(02:35):
if you're driving an international logistics company, utterly absurd. If
you just need to manage vacation requests, yet teams justify
it with the same logic Toddler's use for buying fireworks,
it looks impressive. Cost escalation happens silently. You start with
ten users on one canvas app manageable. Then another department says,
can we join you add users, which multiplies licensing, multiply
environments for dev test and prod, add connectors to keep
(02:58):
data SYNCD with other systems. Suddenly your internal form costs
more than your CRM and storage. Oh the storage. Data
Verse divides its hoard into three categories, database, file, and log.
The database covers your structured tables. The file tier stores
attachments you promised nobody would upload, but they always do.
Then logs track every activity because apparently you enjoy paying
(03:18):
for your own audit trail. Each category bills independently, so
a single power app can quietly chew through capacity like
a board hamster eating cables. Now sprinkle API limits. Every
action against data Verse create, read, update, delete counts toward
a throttling quota. When you cross it. Automation slows or
outright fails. You can solve that by upgrading users to
(03:39):
higher tier licenses. Delightful, isn't it pay to unthrottle your
own automation? These invisible charges cascade into business pain budgets, burst,
adoption stalls, and the IT department questions every low code
project submitted. Henceforth, users retreat to their beloved Excel sheets,
muttering that low code was high cost. All along. Leadership
grows suspicious of anything branded power, because the bill certainly was.
(04:00):
But before we condemn ditaverse entirely. It's worth noting this
complexity exists because data Verse is doing a lot behind
the scenes, role based security, relational integrity, transactional consistency across
APIs things SharePoint lists simply pretend to do. The problem
is that most organizations don't need all of it at once,
yet they pay for it immediately. So when you see
a power apps quote balloon from hundreds to thousands of
(04:22):
dollars per month, you're not watching mismanagement. You're witnessing premature modernization.
The tools aren't wrong, the timing is most teams adopt
Dataverse before their data justifies it, and then spend months
defending a luxury car they never drive above second gear.
Understanding why it hurts is easy. Predicting when it will
hurt that's harder, and that's exactly what we'll unpack next.
Because the licensing layer hides even more booby traps than
(04:43):
the platform itself. Stay with me, you'll want a calculator
handy licensing land mines. The three myths that drain your
budget Myth number one. Everyone in your organization is automatically
covered by Microsoft three sixty five logical, yes, true, absolutely
not power apps and data Verse operate on a separate
set of licenses per app and per user models that
live blissfully outside your M three sixty five subscription. That
(05:06):
means your standard E three or E five user, the
ones you're paying good money for, can create a form
tied to share point lists all day long, but the
second they connect to data Verse, the system politely informs
them they now require an additional license. It's the software
equivalent of paying for both business class and the meal.
This catches even seasoned IT professionals. They assume power apps
(05:26):
belongs to the suite like word belongs to office. But
data Verse is classed as a premium service, so every
user who interacts with data stored inside it needs that
premium tag. It doesn't matter if they just open the
app once. Licensing math doesn't care about your intent, only
your connection string. Most organizations realize this about five hours
before go live, when the error banners start shouting requires
(05:47):
premium license, and the calculator shock follows quickly. The per
app plan looks affordable until you notice that you have
more than one app, multiply that by environments than by users.
Each multi app environment needs multiple entitlements Essentially, every exit
benson of functionality compounds the cost. The trick Microsoft Marketing
never says out loud. Data Verse licensing scales geometrically, not
(06:07):
Linearly a few small apps can balloon into a corporate
sized invoice almost overnight with number two. External users are
free through portals, they are not. Once upon a time,
you could invite guests through azur ad and think you'd
bypass the toll booth. Then data Verse reminded everyone that
external engagement is still consumption of capacity. Whether it's a
public facing portal or supplier dashboard, the interactions consume authenticated
(06:29):
sessions measured against your tenant. That translates into additional cost,
either per login or per capacity pack, depending on your
portal configuration. The free guest misconception stems from how Microsoft
treats azure Ad guest users in teams or SharePoint. They
cost nothing there. But data Verse plays a different game.
When data sits behind a model driven app or a
power pagees portal, every visitor touches that data through data
(06:51):
Verse APIs, you pay for those transactions. Worse, you also
inherit the compliance overhead, GDPR auditing and log storage, which
aren't guest discounted, so that external survey you thought would
be free suddenly operates like a billable SaaS service you
accidentally launched. Now mis number three. Storage is cheap. No
storage was cheap back when your data lived in shared
SharePoint libraries. Data Verse, by contrast, divides its storage by species, database, file,
(07:15):
and log and builds each one separately. The database tier
holds structured tables, the file tier takes attachments and images.
The lock tier keeps change history. Each tier has its
own price per gigabyte per month. Add to that the
fact that every environment gets only a microscopic starter quota,
and you discover the miracle of compound storage inflation. Let's
(07:36):
illustrate that in slow motion, a small power apps deployment
with fifty users might come with a few gigs of capacity.
Sounds fine until those users start uploading attachments. Suddenly the
file storage alone passes the baseline. You upgrade, then logs accumulate,
because governance demands auditing upgrade again. For midsize enterprises, that
cost can outpace licensing itself, especially if automation systems are
(07:57):
constantly writing and deleting data. The smarter way way to
handle this is to forecast capacity equals environments multiplied by apps,
multiplied by users multiplied by storage multipliers. That formula isn't
printed anywhere official, but every experienced power platform architect knows
it by heart. You can roughly predict when data Verse
will start nibbling through your budget just by charting those dimensions.
Every new environment double storage overhead, every connector writing auditlogs
(08:20):
add capacity packs. Data verse behaves like a living organism
feeded data, and it grows hungrier. But the budget pain
isn't inevitable. Architects who plan mixed licensing regimes, perhaps using
per app plans for light users and full per user
plans for builders, can shave significant cost. Likewise, not every
integration requires data Verse. Many business functions can pull the
same data through standard connectors, hitting SQL, server, Excel, or
(08:43):
SharePoint lists. The experience differs slightly, but the savings are immediate.
Think of it as designing plumbing for a building. You
don't run industrial grade pipes through every restroom, you size
them according to flow. A hybrid power app set up
data verse for your core records lists for casual data
is practically invisible to end users, yet dramatically cheaper to maintain.
You sacrifice a bit of centralized elegance for financial sanity.
(09:04):
Even if you survive this licensing labyrinth with your budget intact.
The next trap isn't financial at all. It's physical. Performance,
scale and latency add their own invisible taxes, and that's
where we move next. Because surviving the math is one thing,
surviving physics is another. Performance and scale. When data verse
actually makes sense, here's the biggest misconception of all. Data
verse doesn't automatically make your app faster. People assume that
(09:27):
because it sounds official, enterprise, great data platform, their sluggish
forms will suddenly turn into Formula one dashboards. The truth,
data verse can be astonishingly fast, but only when your
design deserves it. If your queries are inefficient, if your
delegation settings are lazy, data verse will simply charge you
more for the privilege of being slow. Performance issues start
where ambition exceeds understanding. Canvas apps pull data through connectors,
(09:51):
and those connectors obey delegation limits, the ceiling on how
much data can be processed server side before power apps
gives up and downloads everything locally. If your fil logic
isn't delegable, data Verse won't fix it. It'll happily stream
thousands of rows to your user's browser like a garden
hose pushing syrup. You'll blame the platform the problem your
query syntax. Then comes environment placement. Every data Verse environment
(10:13):
sits in a physical region. Place your production environment in
Europe and ask an American team to use it, and
they'll experience lag measured in coffee SIPs. The network doesn't
care about your global ambitions. If latency exceeds a few
hundred milliseconds per call, screen scrawl. Data Verse doesn't teleport data.
It still moves through cables owned by physics. Now let's
clarify when data Verse actually earns its price. Three scenarios
(10:35):
justify the premium. First, multip ecosystems when multiple power apps,
power automate flows, or even powerbi reports share the same
tables and need consistent security. Second, advanced role based access control,
where table and column permissions must mirror corporate HR structures. Third,
deeply relational data models think end to n relationships, transactional consistency,
(10:58):
and cascading rules across entities. Those are data versus natural habitat.
If you're just capturing daily inspections, or vacation requests. You
don't need cross table referential integrity. You need speed and simplicity.
But if you're managing supply chain data where a single
record update triggers workflows across departments with conflicting permissions, welcome
to data verse territory. It's designed to enforce consistency when
(11:19):
human error is unaffordable. Let me put it bluntly, data
verse isn't about speed. It's about scale under governance. SharePoint
lists excel at small team convenience, Scull excels at raw
query performance when managed by IT. Data verse sits in between,
structured enough for compliance, flexible enough for low code builders.
It's the neutral zone where citizen developers can create without
immediately violating audit policy. Still, scaling data verse requires understanding
(11:43):
its physical thresholds. Each environment enforces API core limits roughly
the heartbeat of your tenant. Each table supports relational dependencies
up to certain levels before query plans grow inefficient. Even
data row limits exist. Adding hundreds of thousands of records works,
but only if you design indc's filter, view, use and
column data types properly treated like an Excel sheet, and
(12:03):
it will perform like one region latency matters too. Data
Verse doesn't replicate instantly between geographies. If your data crosses borders,
say a reporting app in the UK connecting to a
production environment hosted in North America, expect delayed consistency. Microsoft
guarantees reliability, not instantaneous mirroring. If you're architecting global workflows,
buffer your triggers and avoid assumptions about real time updates.
(12:25):
Here's a quick microstory. A consulting team once built an
operations tracker in share Point lists. It worked fine until
five hundred concurrent users began editing at once SharePoint limits,
simultaneous rights collisions, multiplied, records vanished. They migrated to data
Verse after hitting concurrency failure ten times in a week.
Once migrated, performance stabilized Because data Verse handles transactional rights
(12:48):
atomically in plain English. It stops two users from overwriting
each other's work. That's worth paying for. But I've also
seen teams go the opposite route. Overbuilt data Verse back
ends powering one tiny canvas app every change trick cascading flows.
The app loaded unnecessary tables, and soon it took fifteen
seconds just to open a form. Users revolted back to
excel the irony moving that same app to a SharePoint
(13:09):
list restored instant performance and saved thousands per month. So
that's the litmus test. Choose data verse when consistency and
security outrank latency complaints. If regulatory line items, audit tracking,
and unified schemers dominate your design meetings, data versus overhead
is justified. If not, the platform turns into a bureaucratic
bottleneck disguised as innovation. The architecture sweet spot looks like this.
(13:32):
Centralized enterprise records live in data Verse. Peripheral apps surface
subsets of that data through power apps or power automate.
You establish a thin governed core with flexible spokes. That
design scales because each spoke operates semi independently while the
core maintains truth. Remember, data Verse is not an automatic
performance boost. It's a resilience framework. It prevents your low
code environment from collapsing when you scale beyond human coordination.
(13:56):
Use it to impose order, not to chase milliseconds. Once
you internalize that distinction, budget discussions suddenly makes sense. And
now that you know where data versus physics start to
pay off, let's pivot to something far more grounded, the cheaper,
saner roots that offer most of its benefits without the
corporate grade invoice. Smarter alternatives, SharePoint lists, esqual and hybrid options.
(14:16):
Let's step off the data verse roller coaster and look
at SANA rides. Because not every power apps project requires
a data platform that could double as an audit defense system.
Sometimes you just need something lightweight, comprehensible, and free of
hidden multipliers. Enter the alternatives SharePoint lists, Sekle server and
the hybrid combinations that quietly deliver ninety percent of data
versus capability at a fraction of the cost. First, the underdog,
(14:38):
unfairly dismissed at every architecture meeting, SharePoint lists despite rumors
of its demise, Lists remains alive, supported, and terrifyingly efficient
for small or moderately complex apps. It lives inside your
existing Microsoft three sixty five licensed translation. You're already paying
for it for workloads under roughly one hundred thousand items
per list. It can perform surprisingly well. You get versioning, attachments,
(15:01):
permissions by user or group, and power level integration with
power Automate and power apps. Yet consultants arrive, squint at
your lists and pronounce that real apps use data verse.
That's like shaming someone for using a sedan instead of
leasing a semi truck to deliver groceries. Lists handle crod
operations over O data V four, support formula columns, and
respond to triggers. The fundamentals of any power app. They're
(15:23):
not deprecated, they're just unglamorous. The true limitation lies in scalability,
concurrent edits, API throttles, and look up relationships. When you
start building multilist joints or enforcing record level security beyond
site boundaries. Lists grown audibly, But if your data fits
on one team site and your users count in dozens
not thousands, SharePoint remains the rational default. Then we have
(15:44):
cecle server, the grown up, still living in it's basement.
Secle offers raw performance, full query control, indexing, and relational
modeling far beyond low code comfort zones. With premium connectors.
You can tap it from power apps without invoking data
verse at all. The catch someone needs to manage it.
You trade low code convenience for DBA discipline security patches,
schema drift capacity planning for departments with IT support. This
(16:06):
is trivial for citizen developers working under governance radar. It's
nightmare fuel, but Cycle carries one unbeatable quality, predictable pricing.
You pay ones for infrastructure or use Alzua Cycle with
transparent compute and storage tiers, no mystery gigabyte categories, no
per environment capacity packs. If your organization already runs cycle
server internally, linking power apps directly can bypass bookoop licensing
(16:29):
costs while providing professional grade performance. It's not as turnkey
as data Verse, but it doesn't charge enterprise premiums to
behave rationally. Now, the hybrid model the architecture equivalent of
a balanced diet. Here you mix data verse where structure
and security matter, with cheaper layers where agility and experimentation rain.
Imagine storing your mission critical master data customers product skews
(16:50):
controlled vocabularies inside data Verse, then build satellite power apps
that collect or display contextual information through SharePoint lists. The
hub retains integric, the spokes daylight weight. This hybrid approach
dodges the all or nothing trap. Power apps can reference
multiple data sources within one environment. For example, an events
management app might read speaker data from data Verse because
(17:12):
HR demands encryption, but collect session feedback through a list,
so interns can edit without premium licenses. Both coexist seamlessly.
Through power automate flows. You get data versus relational power
only where it's justified. Governance types love to say standardize
everything that's expensive dogma. Standardization belongs where compliance risk is high,
not in every inventory tracker or meeting scheduler. Hybrid models
(17:35):
embrace diversity. Boole in fields can live in lists, Transactional
tables belong in data verse. Analytics end up in power
bi data sets or secl. The art lies in drawing
boundaries according to cost and sensitivity, not brand alignment. A
brief word on performance. SharePoint lists respond faster for small
workloads because their API stack is thinner. Each call does
(17:55):
less validation. Once you pass workload thresholds or introduce cross
site joints. Es, color leaps ahead. Data verse sits comfortably
between prioritizing consistency checks over sheer speed, understanding that physics
saves hours of debugging mythical slowdowns. Now, when should you
still choose data verse despite these cheaper alternatives. When regulatory
audit record immutability and fine grain security outweigh storage cost,
(18:18):
financial systems, medical logs, intellectual property, repositories. These require schema
enforcement and transactional isolation. Everything else, start cheaper and promote
only when necessary. This decision isn't sentiment, it's economics. Data
verse is the Ferrari with impeccable engineering. Share Point lists
are the reliable sedan that performs fine until you attach
(18:39):
a trailer. ESQL server is the freight truck high upkeep
infinite talk. Mix them intelligently and you'll stop confusing engineering
prestige with business value. Fit data verse to need not status.
When someone insists every power app must use it for standardization,
kindly remind them that standardization also applies to bankruptcy filings.
Once you internalize that, you are ready for the real
maturity test, discipline before development, because tools don't bankrupt projects.
(19:04):
Unasked questions do implementation discipline Questions to ask before you build.
Every over budget power apps project begins with a blank
canvas and no interrogation. Phase builders jump straight to forms
and colors, then panic when licensing alerts appear. Let's correct
that before writing a single formula, ask three deceptively boring questions.
Question one, who owns the data? If ownership resides with it?
(19:26):
Data verse or sequel makes sense. They provide central control
and audit trails. If ownership stays with the department, use
SharePoint where the site admin can self serve. Ownership defines governance,
which defines platform. Creating a data verse table that no
one officially maintains is how shadow databases are born, expensive
invisible liabilities with no steward. Question two, what's the expected
scale storage, API usage and external traffic? Most teams guess
(19:50):
and overshoot. A few thousand records per month means lists
or azure sigle with minimal cost tens of millions data
verse or proper sequel estimate transaction volume, map, automation trigger.
Understand that every on ad item flow consumes API calls.
Treat data verse capacity like fuel. You budget it deliberately.
Question three, Which compliance or security obligations justify premium licensing,
(20:11):
role based access, encryption, field level ordered? Use them only
if regulations demand it, Otherwise you're purchasing paranoia. Data versus
granularity is vital in regulated industries, unnecessary for vacation calendars.
Once these questions have answers, draft a cost model users
X apps, X environments X data categories. It doesn't need decimals.
It needs direction. If your prototype already skews costly, simplify
(20:35):
now instead of retrofitting later. This is where collaboration saves money.
Business users understand process, It understands constraints, merge them. Let
it preview the architecture before departments unleashed low code enthusiasm.
That single conversation prevents half of all future license escalations.
Adopt the prototype with lists. Graduate to data verse strategy.
Start with the free foundation. If it crumbles under concurrency
(20:57):
or security requirements, migrate versus import tools. Handle schema elevation gracefully.
Whereas downgrading is agony, think of it as academic progression.
Bachelors and lists masters in data verse skip grades and
you pay tuition forever. Implement a checklist mindset before approval.
Ensure each app owner can answer what data volume and
growth rate are expected? Where will files and logs physically reside?
(21:19):
Who has permission to create new environments? How will licensing scale?
As departments adopt, force yourself through that ritual and cost
becomes predictable by design. The last principle, data verse is
a tool, not an identity badge. Using it doesn't prove maturity.
It proves procurement capacity. Your credibility rests on delivering stable,
maintainable apps with minimal waste. That means knowing when a
(21:41):
humble list will suffice and when governance truly demands premium architecture.
So before another power apps kick off, dazzles stakeholders with buzzwords, pause,
Treat data verse as a question, not an answer. The
smartest builders design budgets as carefully as tables. Do that,
and your next app will impress for functionality, not for
how we painfully it inflated the finance report the data
(22:02):
verse reality check. Here's the blunt truth. Data verse isn't
a scam. It's just misunderstood. It was built for enterprise governance,
not departmental wish lists. Its power is unquestionable, row level security,
transactional integrity, centralized schema management. But power without proportion equals waste.
Treat it as your first resort and you'll learn the
mathematics of regret. Treat it as your graduation platform, and
(22:25):
it becomes the backbone of scale success. The key lesson
is brutally simple. Data verse delivers value only when governance
demands it. Every feature you enable auditing, environment, isolation, capacity
expansion targets control at a cost. If that control isn't
protecting something critical, your funding bureaucracy not progress. Low code
doesn't mean low cost. When you ignore architecture, math, licensing
(22:47):
remains the invisible villain. Many projects fail not from bad design,
but from unchecked entitlement sprawl forecast the capacity question whether
every user truly needs premium access separate experimentation from production.
The cheapest app is the one that never crosses the
premium threshold until the data insists. Start small, prototype in
lists or seql, measure what breaks, then escalate carefully. Data
(23:11):
Verse rewards intentional scaling. Its efficiency emerges only under pressure
worth paying for everything before that is ego accounting disguised
as modernization. So the next time someone says we'll just
use data Verse, its enterprise respond appropriately. So is the bill,
because apparently reading Microsoft's pricing matrix now qualifies as an
advanced certification exam. If you learned how to save money today,
(23:32):
return the favor. Subscribe to the M three sixty five show.
Each episode cuts through licensing mythology and teaches architecture that
respects both tech and budget. Intelligence saves dollars rebellion, waste them,
choose intelligence, press, follow, and let efficiency be your next
subscription tier.
You thought data Verse was included, didn't you. You installed
power Apps, connected your SharePoint list, and then surprise, a
message popped up asking for premium licensing. Congratulations, You've just
discovered the subtle art of Microsoft's not technically a hidden fee.
Your Power Apps project, born innocent as a digital form replacement,
is suddenly demanding a subscription model that could fund a
small village. You didn't break anything, You just connected the
(00:22):
wrong data source, and data Verse, bless its enterprise heart,
decided you must now pay for the privilege of doing
things correctly. Here's the trap. Everyone assumes data Verse comes
with Microsoft three sixty five. After all, you already pay
for Exchange, SharePoint teams, even Viva because someone said collaboration,
so naturally data Verse should be part of the same family. Nope,
it's the fancy cousin. They show up at family reunions
(00:44):
but invoice you afterward. So let's address the uncomfortable truth.
Data Verse can double or triple your power Apps cost
if you don't know how it's structured. It's powerful, yes,
but it's not automatically the right choice. The same way
owning a Ferrari is not the right choice for your
morning coffee run. Today we're dissecting the data verse cost illusion,
why your budget explodes, which licensing myths Microsoft Marketing quietly
(01:05):
tiptoes around, and the cheaper setups that do eighty percent
of the job without a single premium connector. And stay
to the end because I'm revealing one cost cutting secret.
Microsoft will never put in a slide deck spoiler. It's legal,
just unprofitable for them. So let's begin where every finance
headache starts. Misunderstood features wrapped in optimistic assumptions, the data
verse delusion why projects go over budget. Here's the thing
(01:28):
most people never calculate. Data verse carries what I call
an invisible premium, not a single line item says surprise,
this costs triple, but every part of it quietly adds
a paywall. First you buy your power apps license. Fine,
Then you learn that the per app plan doesn't cover
certain operations. Add another license tier. Then you realize storage
is built separately database, file and log categories that refuse
(01:49):
to share space. Each tier has a different rate measured
in gigabytes and regret. And of course you'll need environments
plural because your test version shouldn't share a back end
with production, duplicate one environ and watch your costs politely
double create a sandbox for quality assurance, and congratulations, you
now have a subscription Zoo. Data Verse makes accountants nostalgic
for Oracle simplicity. Users think they're paying for an ordinary database,
(02:12):
they're not. Data Verse isn't just a database. It's a
managed data platform, wrapped in compliance layers, integration endpoints, and
table level security policies designed for enterprises that fear audits
more than hackers. You're leasing a luxury sedan when all
you needed was a bicycle with gears. Picture data Verse
as that saddan leather seats, redundant airbags, telemetry everywhere perfect
(02:35):
if you're driving an international logistics company, utterly absurd. If
you just need to manage vacation requests, yet teams justify
it with the same logic Toddler's use for buying fireworks,
it looks impressive. Cost escalation happens silently. You start with
ten users on one canvas app manageable. Then another department says,
can we join you add users, which multiplies licensing, multiply
environments for dev test and prod, add connectors to keep
(02:58):
data SYNCD with other systems. Suddenly your internal form costs
more than your CRM and storage. Oh the storage. Data
Verse divides its hoard into three categories, database, file, and log.
The database covers your structured tables. The file tier stores
attachments you promised nobody would upload, but they always do.
Then logs track every activity because apparently you enjoy paying
(03:18):
for your own audit trail. Each category bills independently, so
a single power app can quietly chew through capacity like
a board hamster eating cables. Now sprinkle API limits. Every
action against data Verse create, read, update, delete counts toward
a throttling quota. When you cross it. Automation slows or
outright fails. You can solve that by upgrading users to
(03:39):
higher tier licenses. Delightful, isn't it pay to unthrottle your
own automation? These invisible charges cascade into business pain budgets, burst,
adoption stalls, and the IT department questions every low code
project submitted. Henceforth, users retreat to their beloved Excel sheets,
muttering that low code was high cost. All along. Leadership
grows suspicious of anything branded power, because the bill certainly was.
(04:00):
But before we condemn ditaverse entirely. It's worth noting this
complexity exists because data Verse is doing a lot behind
the scenes, role based security, relational integrity, transactional consistency across
APIs things SharePoint lists simply pretend to do. The problem
is that most organizations don't need all of it at once,
yet they pay for it immediately. So when you see
a power apps quote balloon from hundreds to thousands of
(04:22):
dollars per month, you're not watching mismanagement. You're witnessing premature modernization.
The tools aren't wrong, the timing is most teams adopt
Dataverse before their data justifies it, and then spend months
defending a luxury car they never drive above second gear.
Understanding why it hurts is easy. Predicting when it will
hurt that's harder, and that's exactly what we'll unpack next.
Because the licensing layer hides even more booby traps than
(04:43):
the platform itself. Stay with me, you'll want a calculator
handy licensing land mines. The three myths that drain your
budget Myth number one. Everyone in your organization is automatically
covered by Microsoft three sixty five logical, yes, true, absolutely
not power apps and data Verse operate on a separate
set of licenses per app and per user models that
live blissfully outside your M three sixty five subscription. That
(05:06):
means your standard E three or E five user, the
ones you're paying good money for, can create a form
tied to share point lists all day long, but the
second they connect to data Verse, the system politely informs
them they now require an additional license. It's the software
equivalent of paying for both business class and the meal.
This catches even seasoned IT professionals. They assume power apps
(05:26):
belongs to the suite like word belongs to office. But
data Verse is classed as a premium service, so every
user who interacts with data stored inside it needs that
premium tag. It doesn't matter if they just open the
app once. Licensing math doesn't care about your intent, only
your connection string. Most organizations realize this about five hours
before go live, when the error banners start shouting requires
(05:47):
premium license, and the calculator shock follows quickly. The per
app plan looks affordable until you notice that you have
more than one app, multiply that by environments than by users.
Each multi app environment needs multiple entitlements Essentially, every exit
benson of functionality compounds the cost. The trick Microsoft Marketing
never says out loud. Data Verse licensing scales geometrically, not
(06:07):
Linearly a few small apps can balloon into a corporate
sized invoice almost overnight with number two. External users are
free through portals, they are not. Once upon a time,
you could invite guests through azur ad and think you'd
bypass the toll booth. Then data Verse reminded everyone that
external engagement is still consumption of capacity. Whether it's a
public facing portal or supplier dashboard, the interactions consume authenticated
(06:29):
sessions measured against your tenant. That translates into additional cost,
either per login or per capacity pack, depending on your
portal configuration. The free guest misconception stems from how Microsoft
treats azure Ad guest users in teams or SharePoint. They
cost nothing there. But data Verse plays a different game.
When data sits behind a model driven app or a
power pagees portal, every visitor touches that data through data
(06:51):
Verse APIs, you pay for those transactions. Worse, you also
inherit the compliance overhead, GDPR auditing and log storage, which
aren't guest discounted, so that external survey you thought would
be free suddenly operates like a billable SaaS service you
accidentally launched. Now mis number three. Storage is cheap. No
storage was cheap back when your data lived in shared
SharePoint libraries. Data Verse, by contrast, divides its storage by species, database, file,
(07:15):
and log and builds each one separately. The database tier
holds structured tables, the file tier takes attachments and images.
The lock tier keeps change history. Each tier has its
own price per gigabyte per month. Add to that the
fact that every environment gets only a microscopic starter quota,
and you discover the miracle of compound storage inflation. Let's
(07:36):
illustrate that in slow motion, a small power apps deployment
with fifty users might come with a few gigs of capacity.
Sounds fine until those users start uploading attachments. Suddenly the
file storage alone passes the baseline. You upgrade, then logs accumulate,
because governance demands auditing upgrade again. For midsize enterprises, that
cost can outpace licensing itself, especially if automation systems are
(07:57):
constantly writing and deleting data. The smarter way way to
handle this is to forecast capacity equals environments multiplied by apps,
multiplied by users multiplied by storage multipliers. That formula isn't
printed anywhere official, but every experienced power platform architect knows
it by heart. You can roughly predict when data Verse
will start nibbling through your budget just by charting those dimensions.
Every new environment double storage overhead, every connector writing auditlogs
(08:20):
add capacity packs. Data verse behaves like a living organism
feeded data, and it grows hungrier. But the budget pain
isn't inevitable. Architects who plan mixed licensing regimes, perhaps using
per app plans for light users and full per user
plans for builders, can shave significant cost. Likewise, not every
integration requires data Verse. Many business functions can pull the
same data through standard connectors, hitting SQL, server, Excel, or
(08:43):
SharePoint lists. The experience differs slightly, but the savings are immediate.
Think of it as designing plumbing for a building. You
don't run industrial grade pipes through every restroom, you size
them according to flow. A hybrid power app set up
data verse for your core records lists for casual data
is practically invisible to end users, yet dramatically cheaper to maintain.
You sacrifice a bit of centralized elegance for financial sanity.
(09:04):
Even if you survive this licensing labyrinth with your budget intact.
The next trap isn't financial at all. It's physical. Performance,
scale and latency add their own invisible taxes, and that's
where we move next. Because surviving the math is one thing,
surviving physics is another. Performance and scale. When data verse
actually makes sense, here's the biggest misconception of all. Data
verse doesn't automatically make your app faster. People assume that
(09:27):
because it sounds official, enterprise, great data platform, their sluggish
forms will suddenly turn into Formula one dashboards. The truth,
data verse can be astonishingly fast, but only when your
design deserves it. If your queries are inefficient, if your
delegation settings are lazy, data verse will simply charge you
more for the privilege of being slow. Performance issues start
where ambition exceeds understanding. Canvas apps pull data through connectors,
(09:51):
and those connectors obey delegation limits, the ceiling on how
much data can be processed server side before power apps
gives up and downloads everything locally. If your fil logic
isn't delegable, data Verse won't fix it. It'll happily stream
thousands of rows to your user's browser like a garden
hose pushing syrup. You'll blame the platform the problem your
query syntax. Then comes environment placement. Every data Verse environment
(10:13):
sits in a physical region. Place your production environment in
Europe and ask an American team to use it, and
they'll experience lag measured in coffee SIPs. The network doesn't
care about your global ambitions. If latency exceeds a few
hundred milliseconds per call, screen scrawl. Data Verse doesn't teleport data.
It still moves through cables owned by physics. Now let's
clarify when data Verse actually earns its price. Three scenarios
(10:35):
justify the premium. First, multip ecosystems when multiple power apps,
power automate flows, or even powerbi reports share the same
tables and need consistent security. Second, advanced role based access control,
where table and column permissions must mirror corporate HR structures. Third,
deeply relational data models think end to n relationships, transactional consistency,
(10:58):
and cascading rules across entities. Those are data versus natural habitat.
If you're just capturing daily inspections, or vacation requests. You
don't need cross table referential integrity. You need speed and simplicity.
But if you're managing supply chain data where a single
record update triggers workflows across departments with conflicting permissions, welcome
to data verse territory. It's designed to enforce consistency when
(11:19):
human error is unaffordable. Let me put it bluntly, data
verse isn't about speed. It's about scale under governance. SharePoint
lists excel at small team convenience, Scull excels at raw
query performance when managed by IT. Data verse sits in between,
structured enough for compliance, flexible enough for low code builders.
It's the neutral zone where citizen developers can create without
immediately violating audit policy. Still, scaling data verse requires understanding
(11:43):
its physical thresholds. Each environment enforces API core limits roughly
the heartbeat of your tenant. Each table supports relational dependencies
up to certain levels before query plans grow inefficient. Even
data row limits exist. Adding hundreds of thousands of records works,
but only if you design indc's filter, view, use and
column data types properly treated like an Excel sheet, and
(12:03):
it will perform like one region latency matters too. Data
Verse doesn't replicate instantly between geographies. If your data crosses borders,
say a reporting app in the UK connecting to a
production environment hosted in North America, expect delayed consistency. Microsoft
guarantees reliability, not instantaneous mirroring. If you're architecting global workflows,
buffer your triggers and avoid assumptions about real time updates.
(12:25):
Here's a quick microstory. A consulting team once built an
operations tracker in share Point lists. It worked fine until
five hundred concurrent users began editing at once SharePoint limits,
simultaneous rights collisions, multiplied, records vanished. They migrated to data
Verse after hitting concurrency failure ten times in a week.
Once migrated, performance stabilized Because data Verse handles transactional rights
(12:48):
atomically in plain English. It stops two users from overwriting
each other's work. That's worth paying for. But I've also
seen teams go the opposite route. Overbuilt data Verse back
ends powering one tiny canvas app every change trick cascading flows.
The app loaded unnecessary tables, and soon it took fifteen
seconds just to open a form. Users revolted back to
excel the irony moving that same app to a SharePoint
(13:09):
list restored instant performance and saved thousands per month. So
that's the litmus test. Choose data verse when consistency and
security outrank latency complaints. If regulatory line items, audit tracking,
and unified schemers dominate your design meetings, data versus overhead
is justified. If not, the platform turns into a bureaucratic
bottleneck disguised as innovation. The architecture sweet spot looks like this.
(13:32):
Centralized enterprise records live in data Verse. Peripheral apps surface
subsets of that data through power apps or power automate.
You establish a thin governed core with flexible spokes. That
design scales because each spoke operates semi independently while the
core maintains truth. Remember, data Verse is not an automatic
performance boost. It's a resilience framework. It prevents your low
code environment from collapsing when you scale beyond human coordination.
(13:56):
Use it to impose order, not to chase milliseconds. Once
you internalize that distinction, budget discussions suddenly makes sense. And
now that you know where data versus physics start to
pay off, let's pivot to something far more grounded, the cheaper,
saner roots that offer most of its benefits without the
corporate grade invoice. Smarter alternatives, SharePoint lists, esqual and hybrid options.
(14:16):
Let's step off the data verse roller coaster and look
at SANA rides. Because not every power apps project requires
a data platform that could double as an audit defense system.
Sometimes you just need something lightweight, comprehensible, and free of
hidden multipliers. Enter the alternatives SharePoint lists, Sekle server and
the hybrid combinations that quietly deliver ninety percent of data
versus capability at a fraction of the cost. First, the underdog,
(14:38):
unfairly dismissed at every architecture meeting, SharePoint lists despite rumors
of its demise, Lists remains alive, supported, and terrifyingly efficient
for small or moderately complex apps. It lives inside your
existing Microsoft three sixty five licensed translation. You're already paying
for it for workloads under roughly one hundred thousand items
per list. It can perform surprisingly well. You get versioning, attachments,
(15:01):
permissions by user or group, and power level integration with
power Automate and power apps. Yet consultants arrive, squint at
your lists and pronounce that real apps use data verse.
That's like shaming someone for using a sedan instead of
leasing a semi truck to deliver groceries. Lists handle crod
operations over O data V four, support formula columns, and
respond to triggers. The fundamentals of any power app. They're
(15:23):
not deprecated, they're just unglamorous. The true limitation lies in scalability,
concurrent edits, API throttles, and look up relationships. When you
start building multilist joints or enforcing record level security beyond
site boundaries. Lists grown audibly, But if your data fits
on one team site and your users count in dozens
not thousands, SharePoint remains the rational default. Then we have
(15:44):
cecle server, the grown up, still living in it's basement.
Secle offers raw performance, full query control, indexing, and relational
modeling far beyond low code comfort zones. With premium connectors.
You can tap it from power apps without invoking data
verse at all. The catch someone needs to manage it.
You trade low code convenience for DBA discipline security patches,
schema drift capacity planning for departments with IT support. This
(16:06):
is trivial for citizen developers working under governance radar. It's
nightmare fuel, but Cycle carries one unbeatable quality, predictable pricing.
You pay ones for infrastructure or use Alzua Cycle with
transparent compute and storage tiers, no mystery gigabyte categories, no
per environment capacity packs. If your organization already runs cycle
server internally, linking power apps directly can bypass bookoop licensing
(16:29):
costs while providing professional grade performance. It's not as turnkey
as data Verse, but it doesn't charge enterprise premiums to
behave rationally. Now, the hybrid model the architecture equivalent of
a balanced diet. Here you mix data verse where structure
and security matter, with cheaper layers where agility and experimentation rain.
Imagine storing your mission critical master data customers product skews
(16:50):
controlled vocabularies inside data Verse, then build satellite power apps
that collect or display contextual information through SharePoint lists. The
hub retains integric, the spokes daylight weight. This hybrid approach
dodges the all or nothing trap. Power apps can reference
multiple data sources within one environment. For example, an events
management app might read speaker data from data Verse because
(17:12):
HR demands encryption, but collect session feedback through a list,
so interns can edit without premium licenses. Both coexist seamlessly.
Through power automate flows. You get data versus relational power
only where it's justified. Governance types love to say standardize
everything that's expensive dogma. Standardization belongs where compliance risk is high,
not in every inventory tracker or meeting scheduler. Hybrid models
(17:35):
embrace diversity. Boole in fields can live in lists, Transactional
tables belong in data verse. Analytics end up in power
bi data sets or secl. The art lies in drawing
boundaries according to cost and sensitivity, not brand alignment. A
brief word on performance. SharePoint lists respond faster for small
workloads because their API stack is thinner. Each call does
(17:55):
less validation. Once you pass workload thresholds or introduce cross
site joints. Es, color leaps ahead. Data verse sits comfortably
between prioritizing consistency checks over sheer speed, understanding that physics
saves hours of debugging mythical slowdowns. Now, when should you
still choose data verse despite these cheaper alternatives. When regulatory
audit record immutability and fine grain security outweigh storage cost,
(18:18):
financial systems, medical logs, intellectual property, repositories. These require schema
enforcement and transactional isolation. Everything else, start cheaper and promote
only when necessary. This decision isn't sentiment, it's economics. Data
verse is the Ferrari with impeccable engineering. Share Point lists
are the reliable sedan that performs fine until you attach
(18:39):
a trailer. ESQL server is the freight truck high upkeep
infinite talk. Mix them intelligently and you'll stop confusing engineering
prestige with business value. Fit data verse to need not status.
When someone insists every power app must use it for standardization,
kindly remind them that standardization also applies to bankruptcy filings.
Once you internalize that, you are ready for the real
maturity test, discipline before development, because tools don't bankrupt projects.
(19:04):
Unasked questions do implementation discipline Questions to ask before you build.
Every over budget power apps project begins with a blank
canvas and no interrogation. Phase builders jump straight to forms
and colors, then panic when licensing alerts appear. Let's correct
that before writing a single formula, ask three deceptively boring questions.
Question one, who owns the data? If ownership resides with it?
(19:26):
Data verse or sequel makes sense. They provide central control
and audit trails. If ownership stays with the department, use
SharePoint where the site admin can self serve. Ownership defines governance,
which defines platform. Creating a data verse table that no
one officially maintains is how shadow databases are born, expensive
invisible liabilities with no steward. Question two, what's the expected
scale storage, API usage and external traffic? Most teams guess
(19:50):
and overshoot. A few thousand records per month means lists
or azure sigle with minimal cost tens of millions data
verse or proper sequel estimate transaction volume, map, automation trigger.
Understand that every on ad item flow consumes API calls.
Treat data verse capacity like fuel. You budget it deliberately.
Question three, Which compliance or security obligations justify premium licensing,
(20:11):
role based access, encryption, field level ordered? Use them only
if regulations demand it, Otherwise you're purchasing paranoia. Data versus
granularity is vital in regulated industries, unnecessary for vacation calendars.
Once these questions have answers, draft a cost model users
X apps, X environments X data categories. It doesn't need decimals.
It needs direction. If your prototype already skews costly, simplify
(20:35):
now instead of retrofitting later. This is where collaboration saves money.
Business users understand process, It understands constraints, merge them. Let
it preview the architecture before departments unleashed low code enthusiasm.
That single conversation prevents half of all future license escalations.
Adopt the prototype with lists. Graduate to data verse strategy.
Start with the free foundation. If it crumbles under concurrency
(20:57):
or security requirements, migrate versus import tools. Handle schema elevation gracefully.
Whereas downgrading is agony, think of it as academic progression.
Bachelors and lists masters in data verse skip grades and
you pay tuition forever. Implement a checklist mindset before approval.
Ensure each app owner can answer what data volume and
growth rate are expected? Where will files and logs physically reside?
(21:19):
Who has permission to create new environments? How will licensing scale?
As departments adopt, force yourself through that ritual and cost
becomes predictable by design. The last principle, data verse is
a tool, not an identity badge. Using it doesn't prove maturity.
It proves procurement capacity. Your credibility rests on delivering stable,
maintainable apps with minimal waste. That means knowing when a
(21:41):
humble list will suffice and when governance truly demands premium architecture.
So before another power apps kick off, dazzles stakeholders with buzzwords, pause,
Treat data verse as a question, not an answer. The
smartest builders design budgets as carefully as tables. Do that,
and your next app will impress for functionality, not for
how we painfully it inflated the finance report the data
(22:02):
verse reality check. Here's the blunt truth. Data verse isn't
a scam. It's just misunderstood. It was built for enterprise governance,
not departmental wish lists. Its power is unquestionable, row level security,
transactional integrity, centralized schema management. But power without proportion equals waste.
Treat it as your first resort and you'll learn the
mathematics of regret. Treat it as your graduation platform, and
(22:25):
it becomes the backbone of scale success. The key lesson
is brutally simple. Data verse delivers value only when governance
demands it. Every feature you enable auditing, environment, isolation, capacity
expansion targets control at a cost. If that control isn't
protecting something critical, your funding bureaucracy not progress. Low code
doesn't mean low cost. When you ignore architecture, math, licensing
(22:47):
remains the invisible villain. Many projects fail not from bad design,
but from unchecked entitlement sprawl forecast the capacity question whether
every user truly needs premium access separate experimentation from production.
The cheapest app is the one that never crosses the
premium threshold until the data insists. Start small, prototype in
lists or seql, measure what breaks, then escalate carefully. Data
(23:11):
Verse rewards intentional scaling. Its efficiency emerges only under pressure
worth paying for everything before that is ego accounting disguised
as modernization. So the next time someone says we'll just
use data Verse, its enterprise respond appropriately. So is the bill,
because apparently reading Microsoft's pricing matrix now qualifies as an
advanced certification exam. If you learned how to save money today,
(23:32):
return the favor. Subscribe to the M three sixty five show.
Each episode cuts through licensing mythology and teaches architecture that
respects both tech and budget. Intelligence saves dollars rebellion, waste them,
choose intelligence, press, follow, and let efficiency be your next
subscription tier.
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