News & Blog

Microsoft Fabric is an all-in-one analytics solution for businesses of any size. It packages several tools for data science, business intelligence, analytics, and dashboards into a single platform built on a SaaS foundation.

Over the last year, the product has been through limited release enabling some teams to test the waters, and it’s now generally available to purchase. The platform is expected to skyrocket. Since the preview release, 25,000 organisations have already switched from their old platforms to Fabric, including two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies.

Users looking to switch are in good company, and Microsoft’s chairman and CEO Satya Nadella has said this new suite of interconnected tools is “the biggest launch of a data product from Microsoft since the launch of SQL Server.”

So, what’s in store for businesses that are ready to make a switch?

Why is Fabric important?

Fabric effectively unifies many new and existing components into a single integrated environment. These include Power BI, Azure Synapse, Azure Data Factory and more. By bringing them together, Microsoft aims to create the most comprehensive big data analytics platform available.

And this is where the first three operational benefits enter the picture.

To get the level of integration now available, organisations would have needed lots of expertise, both in terms of knowledge of the many platforms and the team-hours available to integrate them.

Fabric also removes decision paralysis for organisations. As a single platform with almost everything needed for big data analytics, organisations shouldn’t have to spend time searching and deciding on bespoke or best-in-class solutions.

A single-provider solution makes licensing much easier too. One platform, one contract, one bill. That’s hours of management and administration saved.

Prioritising user experience and data governance

Fabric is built on a data lake foundation called OneLake, which provides a unified location to store all organisational data that the platform’s suite of tools can draw from. In adopting OneLake, Microsoft has simplified the infrastructure, removing the need for users to understand and implement things like resource groups, redundancy, or role-based access control. The knock-on effect is that silos, particularly created by individual developers, will be a thing of the past.

In creating a simple way to process, analyse, and govern an organisation's data, Microsoft has significantly improved the overall user experience. The single platform offers a consistent experience across the different components and centralises data management. According to Microsoft, the simple, user-friendly experience will be “just like OneDrive”.

AI boosts across the platform

Microsoft has developed Copilot, their AI assistant similar to ChatGPT or Google’s Bard. An incredibly powerful and transformative tool on its own, Copilot is integrated into every data experience across the Fabric platform. This lets users interrogate data, write code, and create dashboards in natural language.

The scale of change that AI assistants represent cannot be overstated – you can read more about how AI is enhancing business intelligence in our blog here.

Having integrated AI in the form of Copilot also allows businesses to be more creative when modelling. Users can more easily run different types of modelling and they can run more of them. For example, when it comes to “what if” analysis, users can adjust the parameters and produce more models.

On top of this, organisations can be more proactive and responsive with their analysis and modelling. There’s greater capability for ad hoc analysis, allowing users to be more fluid in their operations; they can adjust and respond more easily.

What next?

Realistically, Fabric is in the early days. Like any new platform, the biggest challenge for businesses is when to change.

Because the tools are almost all pre-existing ones, they pose little risk themselves. Most of them have had years of road testing, and users will be familiar with their operation and migrating data will involve few hiccups.

The main consideration is whether Fabric is right for your organisation and if you’re ready to make the move. Talk through the options with our experts to see if now’s the time to change.