Feature Explosion in Power Platform

Feature Explosion in Power Platform

The Microsoft Power Platform's evolution mirrors a "Cambrian Explosion"—a period of unprecedented diversification and rapid emergence of new capabilities.

Each release wave introduces a vast array of features, connectors, and enhancements, accelerating the platform's utility and transforming how organizations build solutions.

Microsoft Power Platform Evolution Acceleration

Microsoft Power Platform is a suite of low-code and no-code tools – Power BI (for business analytics), Power Apps (for app development), Power Automate (for workflow/RPA automation), Power Virtual Agents (for chatbots), and more – that enable organizations to build applications and automate processes with minimal coding.

Officially unified under the “Power Platform” name around 2018–2019, these tools have since rapidly grown in capability and adoption. In 2023, Microsoft added advanced AI integration across the platform in the form of Copilot – an AI assistant that can help create apps, flows, and bots using natural language – and launched Copilot Studio for designing and managing custom AI chatbots within Power Platform.

These technologies are critical in today’s enterprise landscape because they address a major challenge: the demand for digital solutions far exceeds the supply of traditional developers. It’s estimated that hundreds of millions of new apps will be needed in the next few years, but organizations struggle to hire enough developers. Power Platform helps close this gap by enabling “citizen developers” (business users with no coding background) to create solutions, while also empowering professional developers to deliver more, faster. In effect, it democratizes software development.

By late 2019, there were already over 3 million monthly active developers building on Power Platform – a mix of citizen makers and partners – and usage was skyrocketing (Power Platform usage grew 300% year-over-year at that time).

Fast forward to 2023, and the community had more than 7.4 million monthly active developers on Power Platform. This explosive growth reflects how indispensable low-code tools have become for enterprises to do more with less.

Equally important is the infusion of AI capabilities. With Copilot (powered by Azure OpenAI Service), Microsoft made it possible in 2023 for a user to simply describe the app or workflow they need in plain English and have the platform generate it. Similarly, end-users can interact with data or trigger processes by chatting with an AI bot. This brings the power of generative AI into everyday business scenarios – something that was essentially science fiction a few years ago.

Low-Code Boom Meets AI Revolution

For instance, a customer service agent can offload routine inquiries to a Copilot chatbot, or a business analyst can have Copilot build a draft of an app for managing inventory just by typing a request.

This combination of low-code and AI is transformative: it not only accelerates development by 5-10x, but also makes advanced capabilities accessible to non-technical users.

From an enterprise perspective, Power Platform (with Copilot Studio) offers a two-fold advantage: unprecedented agility in delivering solutions and AI-driven innovation at scale. Business teams can rapidly spin up apps or automations to solve immediate problems (without waiting months for IT), and at the same time embed AI to unlock new value (like predictive insights, natural language interfaces, etc.).

For example, a global bank used Power Platform to build over 2500 apps and flows governed by a central team, speeding up solution delivery while maintaining control. Another company, Pacific Gas & Electric, built 300+ solutions on Power Platform that save $75 million per year, and is now adopting generative AI to further enhance their service bots. These outcomes highlight why Power Platform is at the center of many digital transformation strategies. It’s not just about creating apps faster – it’s about enabling a culture where anyone can innovate and equipping that innovation with AI and data at every step.

In summary, Microsoft Power Platform (and the new Copilot Studio) are reshaping enterprise software development. They allow organizations to harness their human capital – empowering hundreds of employees outside IT to become creators – and to inject AI into processes for unprecedented efficiency and insight. The rest of this report will dive into the details of this evolution.

We will first examine the pace of product updates (Microsoft’s monthly release cadence and how it has accelerated), then break down major new features by year (highlighting how 2024 was a watershed year for AI features).

We will then discuss adoption trends – including the growth in users, the balance of citizen vs. pro developers, and how Microsoft’s own internal use of Power Platform demonstrates its scalability.

Finally, we’ll outline AccleroTech’ s perspective and approach as a leading partner in this domain, and why an AI-first, agile partner like us can help organizations maximize the value of Power Platform and Copilot in this fast-changing landscape.

Feature Explosion in Power Platform

One striking aspect of the Power Platform’s evolution is the rapid cadence of updates delivered by Microsoft.

To illustrate this change, the table below shows an indicative snapshot of new feature counts and fixes in selected months:

Month (Year)	Approx. New Features Released	Approx. Bug Fixes/Improvements
Jan 2019	3–5	~5
Jan 2020	~8	~10
Jan 2021	~15	~12
Jan 2022	~22	~18
Jan 2023	~30	~25
Jan 2024	~45	~30
Jun 2024	~50	~35
Jun 2025	~52	~40

The platform follows a continuous release cycle – new features and improvements roll out on a near-monthly basis. What’s more, the volume of these updates has grown dramatically.

In the early days (circa 2018–2019), monthly updates contained relatively few new features (often single-digits) as the products were still maturing.

By contrast, in recent years (2022–2025), Microsoft has been shipping dozens of enhancements each month, including major new capabilities, performance improvements, and bug fixes.

Microsoft structures its roadmap into biannual “release waves.” Wave 1 covers features planned for April–September, and Wave 2 covers October–March of the next year. Each wave introduces hundreds of new features across Power Platform, which are then gradually released (some as previews, some as general availability) in monthly increments.

For example, the 2024 Wave 1 plan (covering the first half of 2024) listed hundreds of features to be delivered – roughly averaging to 40–50 new features per month. Similarly, 2024 Wave 2 (H2 2024) brought another flood of improvements.

By the first half of 2025, this pace continued with on the order of ~50 features released each month. Every monthly update also includes numerous fixes and optimizations.

Early on, with fewer users, the platform might have seen maybe 5–10 fixes in a typical month; now it’s common for Microsoft to deploy dozens of bug fixes and performance tweaks each month, reflecting feedback from a greatly expanded user base.

In practical terms, Microsoft went from a more periodic update model (few big changes per year) to a truly agile, cloud-first model for Power Platform.

In 2019, you might wait for the annual Microsoft Business Applications Summit to hear about major new Power Platform features, whereas by 2023–2024, significant enhancements were landing almost every week.

For example, in March 2023, Microsoft rolled out the preview of Copilot in Power Apps/Automate (a huge new AI feature) as part of its monthly update.

In May 2023, the monthly update included general availability of those Copilot features, new connectors, improvements to Power BI visuals, and on top of that over 30 fixes addressing stuff like performance and reliability.

By mid-2024, a single month’s release could span multiple pages of release notes – including things like new AI models in AI Builder, UI upgrades in Power Apps, added governance controls for admins, and speed improvements in Power Automate – all rolled out together.

Enterprises can be confident that if something they need isn’t in Power Platform and Copilot Studio today, there’s a good chance it might appear in the next release wave.

This accelerated release cadence is visualized below, which highlights how Microsoft dramatically increased investment in delivering new features after 2020, especially with the push into AI in 2023.

The trend reflects both innovation velocity and responsiveness to user feedback.

Power Platform Acceleration over years

For organizations using Power Platform, this rapid release cycle has two implications. On the positive side, continuous improvement: you constantly get new tools to work with – whether it’s a new AI capability, a new connector to integrate with another system, or a usability improvement.

The platform of today is significantly more powerful than that of a year ago, which is more powerful than the year before, and so on. Microsoft’s commitment to iterating quickly means your investment in Power Platform keeps yielding more value over time. On the challenging side, keeping up with change becomes important.

With features rolling out so frequently, administrators and Center of Excellence leads need to stay informed (e.g. reading the monthly “What’s New” blog posts, trying preview features in a sandbox) to manage enablement and governance. It’s a trade-off of fast innovation – enterprises must be agile in learning and adopting new features (or pausing ones that aren’t yet right for them).

Many organizations address this by establishing a Power Platform CoE that tracks updates and disseminates relevant ones to makers and developers.

Overall, Microsoft’s ability to ship improvements continuously has been a boon for Power Platform’s competitiveness. It has allowed the platform to quickly close gaps (for example, adding more advanced ALM features by 2022, after hearing feedback from pro developers) and to leap ahead with new ideas (like bringing GPT-4 into the product in 2023).

In closing, the Microsoft Power Platform, enhanced with Copilot AI, is one of the most exciting tools for empowering organizations in the modern era.

With the right approach and partner, it can fundamentally transform how work gets done – making solution delivery dramatically faster and unlocking the creativity of your people.

AccleroTech is committed to being that right partner, bringing both technical excellence and a collaborative, future-focused approach.

Despite this Feature Explosion in Power Platform, we keep you ahead of the curve so you can focus on reaping the benefits: streamlined operations, faster insights, lower costs, and a workforce equipped to innovate every day.

If you wish to avail our services to Accelerate Productivity, contact us at info@acclerotech.com