Fabric in Azure: Unifying Your Data Analytics Platform

Modern businesses are drowning in data. It’s scattered across systems, locked in silos, and often difficult to access when you need it most. The goal of data-driven decision-making remains just that, a goal. In the meantime, your teams are wrestling with fragmented tools, complex integrations, and spiralling costs. 

Microsoft Fabric changes this. It’s a unified analytics platform that brings together everything you need for data engineering, data science, and business intelligence in one place.  Delivered as SaaS and deeply integrated with Azure, Fabric in Azure simplifies how organisations manage, analyse, and act on their data, while ensuring data is structured, governed, and ready to support AI adoption and future technologies. 

For IT decision-makers and data professionals, the question isn’t whether to modernise your data infrastructure. It’s how to do it without adding complexity, burning budget, or disrupting the work your teams are already doing. 

For data and platform teams, this often shows up as fragile pipelines, duplicated datasets, slow reporting cycles, and heavy reliance on specialist engineers to keep analytics running.

Azure and Fabric: How They Work Together 

Azure is Microsoft’s cloud platform, providing the infrastructure and services organisations use to build, host, and scale applications and data platforms. Many organisations are already on Azure. 

Fabric does not replace Azure and Azure does not require Fabric. Fabric is a unified analytics layer that runs on Azure, designed to simplify analytics workloads that would otherwise require multiple Azure services to be deployed, integrated, and managed separately. 

Used independently, Azure provides flexibility and control. Used together, Fabric in Azure delivers a tightly integrated analytics experience, allowing organisations to connect seamlessly with services such as Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure SQL Database, and Azure Synapse, while dramatically reducing the operational overhead of managing those components individually. 

What is Microsoft Fabric? 

Microsoft Fabric is an end-to-end analytics platform delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS). It consolidates multiple Azure services: Data Factory, Synapse Analytics, Data Lake, Power BI and more, all into a single, integrated environment. Fabric in Azure provides a single analytics layer that replaces the need to manage these services independently. 

Think of it as one platform with six core workloads: 

• Data Factory: Orchestrate and schedule data pipelines 

• Data Engineering: Build and manage data at scale using Apache Spark 

• Data Warehouse: Query and analyse structured data with T-SQL 

• Data Science: Develop and deploy machine learning models 

• Real-Time Intelligence: Stream, analyse, and act on live data 

• Power BI: Create visualisations and reports that drive action 

Everything sits on OneLake, a unified data lake that acts as a single source of truth. No more duplicating data across systems or battling with incompatible formats. One lake, one platform, one answer to your data challenges. 

Integration With Azure: Why It Works 

Seamless Connectivity 

Fabric is designed to operate as a first-class analytics experience within Azure, rather than a standalone platform layered on top of existing services. It integrates directly with Azure services including Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure SQL Database, and Azure Synapse, enabling organisations already invested in Azure to adopt Fabric without rearchitecting their data environments. Existing data sources, identity management, security policies, and governance controls carry over seamlessly, reducing the friction and risk typically associated with modernising analytics within Azure. 

OneLake’s shortcut functionality extends this connectivity beyond Microsoft-native services, allowing organisations to access data stored in platforms such as Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage without duplicating it into Azure. This approach reduces egress costs, improves access speeds, and provides a more unified view of the data estate, while still using Azure as the central platform for management and control. 

Power BI at the Core 

Power BI has established itself as the world’s most widely adopted business intelligence platform, with over 20 million semantic models currently in use across organisations of every size and sector. Fabric builds on this widespread adoption by embedding Power BI directly into the Azure analytics experience, rather than treating it as a separate reporting layer. 

Within Fabric in Azure, Power BI is integrated throughout the platform architecture. Data engineers can build pipelines using Azure-hosted data and visualise outputs immediately, data scientists can turn complex models into accessible reports without leaving their development environment, and business users can access live dashboards that reflect real-time data across Azure workloads. This creates a continuous flow from raw data to actionable insight, strengthening the link between Azure analytics and business decision-making. 

Key Benefits of Fabric in Azure 

It Cuts Through Complexity 

Managing analytics within Azure has traditionally meant assembling and maintaining multiple services across Synapse, Data Factory, Power BI, and third-party tools, each with its own configuration, cost model, and operational overhead. Fabric in Azure simplifies this by unifying analytics workloads into a single, fully managed SaaS experience that is natively embedded within the Azure ecosystem. Because services are pre-integrated and governed under one platform, teams spend less time wiring Azure components together and less effort maintaining fragile dependencies. Instead, your data teams can focus on using Azure data more effectively, accelerating insight delivery while reducing the operational burden typically associated with complex Azure analytics estates. 

It Delivers Real ROI 

A Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study found that organisations using Microsoft Fabric can achieve strong returns on investment, reporting a potential 379% ROI over three years based on a composite enterprise model. While actual returns depend on factors such as organisation size, Azure footprint, and data maturity, the findings highlight how Fabric helps organisations extract more value from their existing Azure investments. By reducing duplication across Azure services, improving productivity for analytics teams, and making trusted insights more accessible across the business, Fabric in Azure supports stronger, more consistent decision-making. The value is not just faster analytics, but a more cost-efficient and strategically aligned Azure data environment.  

It Scales With You 

Your data requirements will inevitably evolve as new projects launch, teams expand, and workloads fluctuate throughout different business cycles. Fabric’s capacity model addresses this reality by allowing you to scale compute and storage independently, ensuring you’re only paying for the resources you actually need at any given time. Because it’s delivered as SaaS, there’s no infrastructure to manage, no servers to provision, and no patching schedules to coordinate. You simply scale up or down in response to demand, whilst the platform handles the underlying complexity automatically. 

Real-World Applications 

Enterprise Operational Intelligence 

At an organisational level, Fabric in Azure enables operational intelligence by bringing together data from across the entire business including operational systems, customer platforms, financial applications, and external data sources into a single, governed analytics foundation. When data is unified at scale, organisations gain a real-time view of performance across functions rather than fragmented departmental snapshots. 

Built-in analytics and machine learning capabilities allow patterns, inefficiencies, and emerging risks to be identified early, supporting faster, more informed decision-making at both operational and executive levels. Instead of relying on retrospective reporting, Fabric supports a proactive model where insights are continuously generated as data flows through the platform, strengthening agility across the organisation. 

Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning at Scale 

When all enterprise data is working together within a single Azure-based platform, Fabric enables machine learning to be applied consistently and securely across the organisation. Data engineering, data science, and analytics teams can develop and deploy models using shared datasets, removing the silos that typically limit machine learning initiatives to isolated projects or departments. 

This approach supports use cases such as forecasting demand, identifying operational risks, optimising resource allocation, and detecting anomalies across complex business processes. Because these capabilities are embedded within Fabric and governed through Azure, machine learning evolves from experimental initiatives into a scalable, repeatable capability that delivers ongoing business value. 

Department-Level Insight Built on an Enterprise Foundation 

While Fabric in Azure is designed to operate at enterprise scale, it also enables teams to derive targeted insights without fragmenting the data landscape. For example, marketing teams can analyse campaign performance and customer behaviour using data that is already governed and contextualised within the wider organisation. Finance teams can build accurate forecasting and reporting models based on consistent definitions, while HR teams can explore workforce trends and planning scenarios using trusted, integrated data. 

Because these departmental insights are built on a shared enterprise data foundation, they remain aligned with broader business objectives, ensuring local optimisation never comes at the expense of organisational clarity or strategic oversight. 

Cost Optimisation Without Compromise 

It’s important to be clear about what Fabric represents from a financial perspective. This is not simply a like-for-like replacement of existing infrastructure, but a strategic investment in a more optimised and resilient analytics platform. Fabric in Azure helps organisations make better use of their technology spend by reducing wasted resources, simplifying platform management, and removing the operational complexity that often sits behind fragmented data estates. By consolidating analytics capabilities into a single, scalable, and secure environment, teams can redirect time and budget away from maintaining disconnected systems and towards initiatives that actively support insight, innovation, and business growth.A Forrester study found  organisations saved up to £630,000 over three years by retiring outdated infrastructure and consolidating fragmented technologies into Fabric’s unified platform. These savings stem from having fewer tools to licence, reduced training requirements as teams master one platform rather than many, and simpler administration that requires less specialist intervention. The financial benefits extend beyond direct cost reduction—you’re fundamentally changing how capital is deployed, moving investment from maintenance and firefighting towards innovation and competitive differentiation. 

Governance, Security, and Compliance 

Data breaches and compliance failures carry consequences that extend far beyond immediate financial penalties, encompassing long-term reputational damage, erosion of customer trust, and potential restrictions on future business operations in regulated sectors. Fabric approaches these risks with enterprise-grade security that’s built into the platform architecture rather than retrofitted as an afterthought, recognising that security and governance must be foundational rather than optional. 

Microsoft Purview provides comprehensive end-to-end governance capabilities, from initial data discovery and classification through to detailed lineage tracking that shows exactly how information flows through your organisation. While Purview is a separate Azure service with its own licensing model, Fabric integrates natively with it, allowing organisations to extend governance, risk, and compliance controls into their analytics environment without duplicating effort.  

Sensitivity labels applied within Microsoft 365 carry through automatically to Fabric, ensuring consistent protection across your entire technology estate without requiring manual policy replication. Compliance with GDPR, ISO standards, and sector-specific regulations is embedded throughout the platform’s design and operation, giving organisations confidence that they’re meeting regulatory obligations without sacrificing performance or usability. 

For industries operating under stringent regulatory oversight, like healthcare organisations managing patient data, financial institutions handling sensitive transactions, or legal practices protecting privileged communications, this level of control isn’t simply beneficial, it’s essential for continued operation. Integration with Fabric enables you to meet these demanding requirements whilst simultaneously improving the speed and quality of insights your teams can extract from protected data. 

Funding and Support: Getting Started 

Microsoft Advanced Analytics Funding 

Most organisations are eligible for initial Proof of Value funding through Microsoft’s Advanced Analytics programme, with larger enterprises potentially qualifying for additional support based on projected consumption levels and strategic alignment with Microsoft’s platform priorities. This funding provides a practical pathway to test Fabric within your actual business environment before committing to full-scale deployment, allowing you to validate the platform’s capabilities against real workloads and measure tangible outcomes that inform your investment decision. 

BCN Kickstarters 

BCN offers a dedicated Microsoft Fabric Kickstarter programme specifically designed to accelerate your journey from initial assessment through to working implementation. We begin by thoroughly assessing your current data landscape, understanding where information resides, how it flows through your organisation, and where the most significant opportunities for improvement exist. From this foundation, we identify quick wins that can demonstrate value rapidly whilst simultaneously building a comprehensive roadmap tailored to your specific requirements, ensuring you leave the engagement with clarity about next steps, working prototypes that prove feasibility, and the confidence to move forward with conviction. 

Why BCN? 

BCN has established itself as a Microsoft powerhouse, evidenced by our team holding 8 Microsoft Partner designations and our track record of supporting more than 1,600 clients across diverse sectors and organisational scales. We’ve achieved the Analytics on Azure Advanced Specialisation, a distinction that demonstrates not only deep technical expertise but also proven capability in delivering complex data and analytics solutions that meet Microsoft’s rigorous assessment criteria. 

Our experience spans multiple industries and use cases, from helping the NHS transform healthcare data management through to supporting manufacturing organisations optimise operational analytics and enabling business services firms to unlock strategic value from previously siloed information. Whether you’re implementing Fabric from scratch, migrating from legacy data platforms, or optimising existing Power BI deployments, our focus remains consistently on delivering measurable outcomes rather than simply deploying technology. 

Getting Started With Fabric 

Step 1: Assess Your Current State 

Build a clear picture of your existing data landscape, including where data lives, who uses it, the problems you’re trying to solve and the constraints you face. Identify quick wins where Fabric can deliver immediate value, alongside longer-term opportunities that may require deeper change. 

Step 2: Start Small 

Avoid a full-scale migration. Begin with a focused proof of concept that tackles a specific business challenge using real data and workloads. Use trial capacity to test Fabric with minimal risk, learn what works in practice, and build confidence before widening adoption. 

Step 3: Scale Strategically 

After validating value, expand usage gradually across teams, onboard additional data sources, and mature governance as understanding grows. This phased approach minimises risk while creating sustainable momentum. 

Step 4: Optimise Continuously 

Fabric adoption is an ongoing process, not a one-off project. Use tools like the Capacity Metrics app to monitor usage, spot bottlenecks early, and optimise based on real data. Continue investing in training to ensure teams stay capable and aligned as the platform evolves. 

Next Steps 

Modern data challenges demand modern solutions that can match the complexity and scale of today’s business environment. Microsoft Fabric in Azure delivers the integrated tools, robust governance frameworks, and enterprise scalability required to transform raw data into actionable intelligence that drives competitive advantage. 

If you’re ready to simplify your analytics infrastructure, enhance decision-making capabilities across your organisation, and genuinely empower your teams to extract maximum value from your data assets, we’re here to support that journey from initial assessment through to optimised operation. 

Get in touch and let us know what challenges your team is currently facing. We’ll work with you to develop practical solutions that address your specific requirements whilst positioning you for long-term success.