Microsoft Fabric Explained: Features, Integrations, and Business Value   

What is Microsoft Fabric?

Microsoft Fabric is a unified, SaaS-based analytics platform that brings together data engineering, data science, real-time analytics, and business intelligence. Built on Microsoft’s trusted cloud infrastructure, it simplifies how organisations collect, transform, and analyse data across the Microsoft ecosystem, from Azure Synapse to Power BI. 

By connecting these data silos into a single, governed, collaborative platform, Fabric enables teams to share data efficiently, maintain consistent governance, and generate insights faster, driving better decisions across the organisation. 

How Microsoft Fabric works

Delivered entirely as a SaaS solution, Fabric integrates capabilities from Power BI, Azure Synapse, and Data Factory into a unified experience. Organisations can manage the entire data lifecycle from ingestion and transformation to analysis and visualisation, within one platform. 

Every data professional, data engineer, analyst, or business user can collaborate in the same workspace, ensuring data consistency and accelerating insight generation. 

Key benefits of Microsoft Fabric  

Why should businesses embrace Microsoft Fabric? Here are some compelling reasons: 

• Unified data platform: Microsoft Fabric consolidates multiple analytics services into a single SaaS environment, reducing complexity and tool sprawl. 

• Lakehouse architecture: Fabric introduces OneLake, a unified data lake that supports open formats like Delta and Parquet, combining flexibility with data warehouse performance. 

• Seamless integration: Fabric connects across Microsoft 365, Azure, Power Platform, and other services, providing a consistent experience across the wider Microsoft ecosystem. 

• Enhanced collaboration: Teams work in shared workspaces with notebooks, pipelines, and dataflows for real-time collaboration. 

• Built-in governance and security: Powered by Microsoft Purview, Fabric provides unified data governance, lineage tracking, role-based access control, and compliance support. 

• AI-Powered insights: Integrates Azure Machine Learning and built-in AI models, enabling predictive analytics and intelligent decision-making. 

• Optimised for Power BI: Deep integration with Power BI enables users to build, share, and refresh interactive dashboards directly from Fabric datasets and pipelines.  

Microsoft Fabric features and how they deliver value

Microsoft Fabric includes several core components that not only provide analytics capabilities but also deliver measurable business outcomes. 

• OneLake: Unified multi-engine data lake supporting Delta and Parquet. By centralising all organisational data, OneLake reduces duplication, ensures consistent governance, and provides faster access to trusted datasets, allowing teams to generate insights more quickly.

• Dataflows Gen2: Enables visual data transformation, scheduling, and pipeline integration for repeatable, governed ingestion. This ensures clean, reliable data is available for analysis without constant manual intervention, reducing errors and saving time for analysts.

• Notebooks and Spark: Support scalable engineering and machine learning workloads. Data scientists and engineers can explore complex datasets, train models, and collaborate in real time, accelerating the development of predictive and AI-driven insights.

• Pipelines: Low-code automation of data movement and transformation. End-to-end workflows ensure data flows from source to analysis automatically, freeing teams from repetitive tasks and improving operational efficiency.  

• Real-Time Analytics: Powered by KQL engines for streaming data, anomaly detection, and automated responses via Power Automate. Organisations can monitor live events, detect issues instantly, and trigger automated actions; For example critical for IoT, finance, or operational environments that require immediate insights. 

Microsoft Fabric integration examples

Fabric connects seamlessly across the Microsoft ecosystem, extending the value of data and analytics investments. 

• Power BI integration: Build, share, and refresh dashboards directly from Fabric workspaces with Direct Lake mode for instant queries on OneLake. 

• Azure Synapse integration: Leverage native Synapse capabilities for large-scale processing and analytics without separate workspaces. 

• Microsoft 365 & Power Platform integration: Insights can be embedded in Teams, Excel, SharePoint, Power Apps, and Power Automate. Users can access real-time insights, automate workflows, and build connected, data-driven applications. 

How Microsoft Fabric handles data

Microsoft Fabric is designed to handle data in all its forms, whether structured, unstructured, or streaming, giving organisations complete flexibility over how they store, process, and analyse information. 

• Structured and unstructured data: Supports relational databases, JSON, images, telemetry, and IoT streams. All organisational data, regardless of format, is accessible and analysable in one place, enabling richer insights and informed decision-making. 

• Open data formats: Supports Delta, Parquet, and CSV. Maximises interoperability and future-proofing, ensuring organisations can easily integrate Fabric with existing systems and maintain flexibility as needs evolve. 

• Multi-cloud and hybrid support: Connects to on-premises and other clouds via OneLake shortcuts and connectors. Organisations gain a complete view of their data across environments, breaking down silos and enabling consistent analytics and reporting. 

Get started with Microsoft Fabric

If you are unsure whether Microsoft Fabric is right for your organisation why not check out our blog on Fabric vs Power BI.

Microsoft Fabric unifies data management, analytics, and AI capabilities in one platform, helping organisations unlock more value from their data. Whether you’re modernising your analytics approach or integrating Fabric within your existing Microsoft ecosystem, our team can help you design and implement a tailored solution.  

Get in touch to explore how Microsoft Fabric can transform the way your organisation collects, analyses, and acts on data. 

Contact us at info@pragmatiq.co.uk or call 01908 038110 to learn more.