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Data and analytics

Analytics and BI on Microsoft's stack: Microsoft Fabric as a SaaS platform over OneLake (data engineering, warehousing, real-time analytics, data science and Power BI), Azure Databricks for lakehouse-scale Spark with Unity Catalog, and Azure Synapse Analytics for existing investments.

4 technology profiles in this area

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Overview

Microsoft Fabric is a SaaS analytics platform. Its workloads (Data Factory, Data Engineering, Data Warehouse, Data Science, Real-Time Intelligence, Databases and Power BI) share one store, OneLake, built on Azure Data Lake Storage. Shortcuts give zero-copy access to ADLS, Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage, and mirroring replicates data from Azure SQL Database, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Databricks, Snowflake and others. Fabric IQ, a semantic layer with ontology and data agents, is in preview.

Microsoft's architecture guide calls Fabric the recommended platform for new analytics-integrated machine learning, points to Azure Databricks for lakehouse-scale Spark with MLflow and Unity Catalog governance, and tells Azure Synapse Analytics users to prefer Fabric for new investments.

Licensing is changing: Microsoft is retiring the Power BI Premium per-capacity (P) SKUs and suggests Fabric F SKUs, bought through Azure and billed per second.

If you only need reports for a small team, Power BI Pro or Premium Per User may be enough. Premium Per User does not provision a Fabric capacity, so it cannot run lakehouses, warehouses or notebooks.123

Problems it addresses

  • Data copied into many silos1

    OneLake gives every Fabric workload one logical lake per tenant, and shortcuts read external storage in place without ETL.

  • Choosing Fabric, Databricks or Synapse2

    Microsoft recommends Fabric for new analytics-integrated machine learning, Databricks for lakehouse-scale Spark and Unity Catalog, and Fabric over Synapse for new investments.

  • Power BI licensing changes3

    P SKUs are being retired. On F64 or larger capacities, viewers with a free license can see Power BI content; on smaller F SKUs, each viewer needs Pro or Premium Per User.

  • Governing shared data1

    OneLake Catalog centralizes discovery and governance, and Microsoft Purview adds information protection, data loss prevention and audit for supported Fabric data.

A typical workflow

  1. Land data in OneLake1

    Ingest with Data Factory connectors, mirror operational databases, or add shortcuts to existing lakes.

  2. Transform and model1

    Use Spark notebooks in Data Engineering or SQL in Fabric Data Warehouse, which stores data in the open Delta Lake format.

  3. Build reports4

    Model data and design reports in Power BI Desktop, then publish to the Power BI service; Direct Lake mode queries OneLake without importing data.

  4. Add machine learning1

    Train models in Fabric Data Science, which integrates with Azure Machine Learning for experiment tracking and a model registry.

  5. Size capacity3

    Start on a Fabric trial, then buy an F SKU through Azure with per-second billing and an optional yearly reservation.

Technologies

  • Cloud service

    Azure Databricks

    Azure Databricks runs the Databricks Data + AI Platform on Azure: an Apache Spark lakehouse with Delta Lake tables, Unity Catalog governance, SQL warehouses, MLflow and model serving. It suits teams that need Spark-scale data engineering, machine learning and AI agents over their own cloud storage.

    • Data
    • AI
  • Cloud service

    Azure Synapse Analytics

    Azure Synapse Analytics is Azure's earlier analytics service, combining dedicated and serverless SQL pools, Apache Spark pools and Data Factory-style pipelines in one workspace. It is still supported, but Microsoft's guidance is to prefer Microsoft Fabric for new investments, and it provides migration tools.

    • Data
  • Cloud application

    Microsoft Fabric

    Microsoft Fabric is Microsoft's SaaS analytics platform. Data integration, Spark data engineering, warehousing, real-time analytics, data science, operational databases and Power BI share one lake (OneLake) and one capacity-based license, so teams do not have to wire separate Azure services together.

    • Data
    • AI
  • Platform

    Power BI

    Power BI is Microsoft's business intelligence platform: Power BI Desktop to model data and build reports, the Power BI service to share and govern them, and mobile apps to view them. It is also a core workload of Microsoft Fabric, and capacity licensing is moving from Power BI Premium P SKUs to Fabric F SKUs.

    • Copilot and apps
    • Data

Use cases

Documented implementations

Next steps

  1. List your current Power BI capacity SKUs and plan the move from P to F SKUs.

  2. Run a Fabric trial on one dataset that today is copied between several systems.

  3. If you run Azure Synapse dedicated SQL pools, review the Fabric Migration Assistant before adding new workloads.

  4. Decide where governance lives: OneLake Catalog with Purview, or Unity Catalog if Databricks is your main platform.

Sources

  1. What is Microsoft Fabric (opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Vendor-reported
  2. AI and machine learning products (Azure Architecture Center) (opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Vendor-reported
  3. Understand Microsoft Fabric licenses and capacity (opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Vendor-reported
  4. What is Power BI? (opens in a new tab)Microsoft · Vendor-reported

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