Avanade harnesses Microsoft Fabric as its data foundation for the AI era

Businesses have used some form of data insights to inform decisions for centuries. The processes have evolved through the years, taking a giant leap in the 1980s with the development of data warehouses, followed by the concept of big data and, over time, the introduction of more sophisticated data analysis tools used by specialists. The latest generation of tools delivers greater insights faster based on real-time data, providing a critical edge in today’s highly competitive business environment. 

Avanade, a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft, is a consultancy firm that helps drive digital transformation at organizations across the globe. Forty-three percent of the Fortune 500 are Avanade clients. The company uses data and analytics for a variety of activities across the organization, from powering decision-making to ensuring the best outcomes for their clients. Different teams have very different needs, so the company had an increasingly complex solution stack that included Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and Microsoft Azure SQL Database on the backend and Microsoft Power BI for end-user access.

Data was housed differently and sometimes separately across all the tools, creating access issues and tedious processes. If a user needed to access data housed in another tool, they would have to submit an IT request. The IT team would then duplicate the data and add it to the user’s preferred tool.

“We needed to spend less time supporting the foundation and more time understanding the business implications of what the data was telling us,” says Ron White, Global CIO, Avanade. “We knew we had to simplify our foundation.” 

Avanade wanted to streamline its infrastructure complexity, improve latency, and minimize data integration and management efforts with an option to enable real-time insights. The team evaluated multiple solutions, but ultimately determined only one met all its requirements: Microsoft Fabric.

Reducing complexity and increasing security with Microsoft Fabric

Fabric combines all the Microsoft resources Avanade uses daily into a single, unified software as a service solution. It also includes OneLake—a single, centralized location for data hosting. Users can access and manage their data directly in OneLake using any Fabric tool, eliminating the need to move or duplicate data.

“With Fabric, we are creating a workspace for everyone,” says Cem Urfalioglu, Senior Director, Avanade Global IT. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re a data engineer or a Power BI developer. You’re all part of the workspace now. You’re all working on your artifacts in one single location using the same product. It’s a much more efficient way to work.”

Avanade is taking a phased approach to building its OneLake strategy, creating one layer at a time, beginning with the analytics layer. Once complete, the team will add additional layers in an iterative fashion. Focusing on one layer at a time allows the team to make changes without impacting users, ensuring they can access the latest version of their data. It also means the team can start migrating users before the entire project is complete.

“For example, say we enable our analytics layer for finance reporting. That team can start taking advantage of the benefits of Fabric immediately. They don’t have to wait for a one-to-two-year project to be fully complete. That’s a huge benefit,” Urfalioglu says. “Also, we don’t have to copy or move data around for that team anymore, so we can be that much more productive. It also increases our compliance with internal security risk policies.”

Discovering new benefits

Avanade knew that moving to Fabric would increase efficiency, productivity, and data security across the organization. The team found additional benefits as they rolled out the layers as well. “With Fabric, we see an opportunity for people to extend their skillset and make a bigger impact,” White says. “They’re not just coding or figuring code transformations. Instead, they’re solving business problems.”

Hands-on experience enables Avanade to better advise and serve the growing number of customers expressing interest in Fabric. “We can take what we’ve learned and share with our clients, so that we can provide greater benefit during our engagements,” Urfalioglu says. “That’s a big part of our IT strategy, with a goal of being at the forefront of understanding how to take advantage of the features in Fabric.”

To achieve this objective, the organization is introducing features and educating teams at a steady pace. For example, the team is using the Copilot in Power BI smart narrative feature to enable executives to get quick summaries in a conversational tone about a core area. “With Copilot in Power BI, you can achieve insights in a much more effective, efficient manner versus going through all the visuals and navigating through the interface,” Urfalioglu says. “That’s a superior experience for our analytics teams and analytics customers.”

Microsoft Fabric is now helping Avanade deliver the maximum value of today’s generative AI technologies, and it will help ensure its clients are ready to adopt the rapidly evolving AI innovations of tomorrow. Avanade is taking lessons learned transforming its own data estate with Fabric and delivering it to clients across the globe. Longer-term plans include exploring real-time analytics and connecting the organization’s SQL database to Power BI data marts using the mirroring technology included in Fabric. That’s just the beginning, however. It’s still early in Avanade’s Fabric journey, and the team knows there is more to explore.

“With Fabric, I can spend less time focused on project-oriented work and move the team to focus on other priority items. That’s really powerful,” White says. “That’s the vision that Fabric has presented to us, and we are 100 percent in.”

Find out more about Avanade on LinkedIn.