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In this Q&A with Datacom’s App Data and Analytics GM Andrew Fong and Practice Manager Sunil KS outline how Microsoft Fabric – a unified, cloud-based data platform – can help transform raw data into actionable insights.
Fabric represents a significant advancement in Microsoft's data and analytics offerings. Fabric is an all-in-one analytics software as a service (SaaS) solution for enterprises that covers everything from data movement to data science, real-time analytics and business intelligence. It offers a comprehensive suite of services that eliminate the need for multiple vendors or complex tech stacks, simplifying data management and analytics processes.
Having a single unified analytics platform is the key to Fabric’s promise to provide an end-to-end analytics solution that integrates various components into a cohesive stack. This integration eliminates the need for multiple tools, simplifies data management and analytics processes, all of which contributes to an efficient best in class experience.
Microsoft Fabric helps organisations streamline their data processes and derive actionable insights more efficiently through several key features and capabilities:
Fabric's Dataflow Gen2 enables users to automate data ingestion and transformation workflows, keeping data consistently updated and AI ready. This automation reduces manual intervention and ensures data is always up to date for real-time analysis.
The Fabric Pipeline feature allows organisations to design and automate complex ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes within a single platform. This streamlines data movements across various stages of processing, reduces manual intervention and ensuring data consistency.
Fabric empowers users to access, analyse, and visualise data in real-time without compromising performance or scalability. This capability enables faster and more accurate insights, allowing organisations to make timely decisions based on the most current data.
The platform incorporates advanced analytics capabilities, including AI and machine learning, to uncover hidden patterns and insights from data. This integration allows organisations to leverage predictive analytics and AI-driven decision-making tools seamlessly.
Fabric empowers users across the organisation with self-service analytics tools that are easy to use and understand. This democratisation of data analysis can help foster a data-driven culture and enables more informed decision-making at all levels.
Through features like shortcuts and data mirroring, Fabric simplifies access to data from various sources. This approach reduces data duplication, minimises latency, and optimises resource utilisation.
Fabric provides advanced encryption, compliance features, and role-based access controls, ensuring data security and governance across all analytics experiences.
Microsoft Fabric offers comprehensive integration capabilities with existing data infrastructure and tools, enabling organisations to leverage their current investments while benefiting from Fabric's advanced features.
Fabric integrates natively with Microsoft 365, Azure, and Power BI, providing a unified experience for users already familiar with these tools. This integration allows for smooth data flow and analytics across the Microsoft ecosystem.
The Microsoft Fabric data factory offers hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity, allowing organisations to integrate data from on-premises systems, connect to cloud services like AWS and Google Cloud, and create a unified data platform for comprehensive analytics. This extensive connectivity ensures that organisations can ingest data from their existing infrastructure without significant modifications.
Fabric is designed to work seamlessly with various third-party applications, ensuring compatibility with existing workflows and tools. This flexibility allows organisations to maintain their preferred tools while leveraging Fabric's capabilities.
OneLake, Fabric's unified data lake, allows organisations to retain data in its original location while using preferred analytics tools. The data mirroring feature enables seamless access to any database or warehouse within Fabric's ecosystem, eliminating the need for data duplication. OneLake has been described as “Onedrive for all your analytics data”.
Another major compatibility features is the “SQL analytics endpoint”. Each Lakehouse in Fabric has a built-in Tabular Data Stream (TDS) endpoint called the SQL analytics endpoint, which provides easy connectivity and querying of data from other reporting tools. This feature ensures compatibility with existing SQL-based tools and processes.
Finally, Fabric's Shortcut feature allows users to connect to existing data without copying or moving it, facilitating integration with current data storage solutions.
As with most Microsoft products today, Fabric is infused with AI to boost productivity and democratise access to the latest technology. There are Copilots for each experience within Fabric allowing experts to achieve more and citizen analysts to harness the full analytics potential of the Fabric platform. Here are a handful of ways AI capabilities are helping users get more out of Fabric:
Copilot in Microsoft Fabric allows users to interact with data using natural language queries, making data exploration more accessible to non-technical users. This feature enables the creation of dataflows, pipelines, and SQL statements using conversational language, streamlining the data preparation process.
AI algorithms automatically generate insights and narrative summaries from complex datasets, saving time and providing clear, actionable information. Predictive analytics capabilities help forecast future trends and outcomes, supporting proactive decision-making.
AI assists in creating impactful reports and visualisations quickly, making data more comprehensible and actionable for business users.
AI-powered tools help in data cleaning, enrichment, and integration, ensuring high-quality data for analysis. This improves the overall reliability of insights derived from the data.
The “Real-Time Intelligence” feature in Fabric offers an end-to-end experience for handling streaming data, enabling dynamic data transformation, real-time queries, and immediate action without needing to pre-load data.
Fabric simplifies the process of building and deploying AI models, making advanced analytics more accessible to a wider range of users. This integration allows organisations to leverage sophisticated AI models directly within their data workflows.
As you would expect with a true SaaS offering, Microsoft Fabric implements several robust security measures to protect sensitive business data.
Purview Audit captures audit trails on activities performed in Fabric for monitoring and compliance.
A major private education institute in Brisbane, Queensland piloted Microsoft Fabric to transform their student data management. The benefits included:
Using Fabric's advanced analytics capabilities, they plan to:
A local council in the South Island of New Zealand implemented Microsoft Fabric to power a step change in their customer’s experience when dealing with council operations and to provide robust data governance over their customer data management.
The benefits to date have included:
Microsoft Fabric offers several key advantages for data management and analytics compared to other platforms. Cost, ease of use, scalability and – critically – advanced data analytics capabilities make Microsoft Fabric a good choice for organisations wanting to get more from their data.
The platform is designed to handle varying workloads and large data volumes efficiently, ensuring optimal performance even during peak operations. It can scale to meet the needs of both small organisation and large enterprises
Fabric incorporates advanced data science tools, AI integration, and real-time analytics, enabling organisations to derive predictive insights and make data-driven decisions quickly.
OneLake, the foundation of Microsoft Fabric, allows organisations to retain data in its original location while using preferred analytics tools, providing flexibility and efficiency.
The platform offers a simplified, user-friendly interface with familiar and easy-to-learn shared experiences, fostering collaboration across teams.
By consolidating multiple tools into a single platform, Fabric can potentially reduce costs associated with managing separate systems and licenses.
Fabric provides advanced encryption, compliance features, and role-based access controls, along with centralised administration and governance across all analytics experiences.
The platform integrates natively with other Microsoft tools like Power BI, facilitating a smooth workflow for organisations already using Microsoft products (Ex: Microsoft Purview for Governance and Security).
