If you read one of the recent announcements (like this one Introducing Microsoft Dataflex, a new low-code data platform for Microsoft Teams) you know that CDS (Common Data Service) has been renamed to Microsoft Dataflex Pro (and a subset version for Microsoft Teams is called Microsoft Dataflex).
It's not the first time that Microsoft renames some products/services (if we keep the examples inside the Dynamics space, they just renamed Forms Pro to Customer Voice) so I am not surprised of this change, probably if I write "two years later they will change it again" I may be right.
However the main question is "why they changed the name?". Let's be honest, Microsoft Teams in the recent months gained more and more traction, becoming a popular product inside the ecosystem, I don't have exact numbers but if you probably ask around about Microsoft products, I am quite sure Teams is more known than the Power Platform or one of its services (maybe with the exclusion of Power BI, people love reporting).
When Microsoft decided to introduce a subset of Dynamics CRM CDS to Teams it's right to show these new functionalities to the audience and probably the CDS name wasn't a good fit. CDS carried always a bit of confusion (CDS, CDM, CDS-A, ...) and when CDS appeared practically the only product using it was Dynamics 365, a true separation of the platform (that in my opinion is still in progress but just for minor things) arrived years later. It's easy now to say Dataflex Pro = CDS, wasn't the same with the previous names.
I may or may not agree with the new name or part of it (for example leaving Pro as CDS, or the fact that is Dataflex and not DataFlex or Data Flex) but I really hope Microsoft pushes these products (with a new one just for Teams) in the right way and not only keeping these name changes as a generic announcement.
This post is not a list of the differences between the two versions (Dataflex vs Dataflex Pro) because I am sure that when I discover "functionality X" is available only on CDS Dataflex Pro I will be a bit disappointed, but in the same way I will be very happy when "functionality Y" is available in Dataflex.
They may be based on the same technology, but they are two different products with different targets in mind, we should not forget that. I usually don't talk about licensing, mostly because it's not part of what I do everyday, but if after a product pitch the first question is "how much does it cost?" probably the pitch wasn't that good, if you are proposing Dataflex/Dataflex Pro to improve the capabilities of a process and people don't start to ask "so means that I can do this right?" or "do you think it's possible to do X?" and they focus on just the cost then maybe it's not a good fit, we should not change a product for another, we should focus on doing things better. Said that, licensing is too complex and too aleatory (and for some things too pricey, I am looking at you Power Apps Portals) so my hope is also to have a clear picture of the costs involved if I decide to use the Power Platform or just a part of it.
Welcome Dataflex/Dataflex Pro! You may increase functionalities or change name, but for me you will always be the same when I write Entity newAccount = new Entity("account");, in the end I am a bit sentimental when I write some code.
