Move over Power BI, Fabric is here to save you from data headaches

As companies move to the cloud, data management practices such as data integration, metadata management, data architectural options, and?financial governance?for cloud data become increasingly complex.?Microsoft Fabric aims to resolve the inherent stress and complexity around manual integration, pipelining, and solution design by offering itself as a unified Data and analytics platform with native Azure components pre-integrated. Fabric features a central storage layer called OneLake. Other Azure services, such as Azure Data Factory, Power BI, and Azure Synapse Analytics, are pre-integrated.

Microsoft Fabric represents a fundamental shift in Microsoft’s D&A vision, moving beyond a composable Data and Analytics setup to a pre-integrated data and analytics platform.

The bits: What is Microsoft Fabric?

• Microsoft Fabric was announced in May of 2023 as an evolution of the current Data & Analytics capabilities on Microsoft Azure. It went into General Availability in November of 2023 at Microsoft Ignite and has been?touted as “the biggest announcement since SQL Server” and “OneDrive for Data.” Microsoft Fabric is poised to become the primary D&A offering on Azure. It expands the?Azure data management footprint?to include basic?multi-cloud capabilities?for data residing on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Snowflake via Shortcuts and Mirroring (Preview).
• Microsoft Fabric borrows heavily from Power BI in its user interface's overall design and layout, including the concepts of semantic models,?workspaces, and domains. Workspaces in Fabric can be assigned to domains belonging to different business groups, allowing for federated governance. It also introduces “experiences,” which are persona-centric UIs (for example, data engineers, business intelligence analysts, and data scientists).
• Most native Azure services — such as Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics (SQL and Spark), and Azure Machine Learning — are pre-integrated without requiring manual engineering.
• Microsoft Fabric runs on capacities (a common cost model), which can be purchased from the Azure portal. A single?capacity can?power the entire Fabric ecosystem, allowing for central platform management.
• Azure is expanding its coverage to allow basic AWS and Google Cloud Storage access through Fabric’s Shortcuts. Shortcut provides virtualized access to non-fabric cloud object data sources, including?Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 and Amazon S3, with Google Cloud Storage yet to be announced.

The bytes: What factors influence the decision to migrate to Microsoft Fabric?

Product solution capability considerations:

• Microsoft Fabric offers the most comprehensive analytics solution from Microsoft. Organizations not transitioning may miss out on some emerging features, such as AI-enabled Copilot, unified experience with simplified analytics workload.
• Organizations need to assess Power BI together with other components under the Microsoft Fabric offering for optimal analytics use, which may overlap with their existing investment in data management, data science and data integration components.
• Organizations have the option to continually use Power BI features only by disabling Microsoft Fabric capabilities in the Fabric workspace.

Cost and capacity considerations:

• Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) with low analytics workloads. Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) with low analytics workloads may find the Fabric license more economical, with full Fabric capabilities from low-capacity unit and flexible consumption option (pay as you go).
• Organizations with existing P1 or higher licenses will find reservation more economical under Fabric, though very likely pricier than previous P-SKUs, due to regional price differences and varied price negotiation with Microsoft.
• Organizations will need to resize the capacity requirements with Microsoft, as using Fabric features will inevitably increase analytics workloads.

What's the way forward with Microsoft Fabric?

ABeam Consulting works with customers to help automate data analysis and management processes and increase efficiency and productivity by utilizing Microsoft Data & Analytics services in combination with Microsoft Fabric. Microsoft Analytics and AI are integrated with Azure Cloud, providing easy access to data from various sources. Leverage advanced algorithms for predictive analytics and machine learning to automate tasks and improve accuracy. Interactive, visually appealing data visualization tools make understanding and acting on data insights easy. Drive new sources of innovation and value for stakeholders by implementing context-driven and domain-relevant analytics.

If you are still deciding if a migration to Microsoft Fabric is right for your company, ABeam offers a Fabric proof of value (POV) that can be completed in 3-4 weeks.

Contact us to find out more.

Who to follow:

Raymond Russ , Director of Enterprise Applications

William Nicas , Manager

More insights:

A Forrester Impact Study, The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Fabric: Cost Savings and Business Benefits Enabled by Fabric

Case Study, When Fabric is Stronger than Steel: How a global manufacturing company realized immediate business intelligence value with Microsoft Fabric through a strategic partnership with ABeam