Lumen unifies data, gains near real-time insights, saves 10,000 hours with Fabric

Lumen has long been a leader in enterprise connectivity, but today its ambitions extend far beyond networks and infrastructure. In a world where speed, intelligence, and adaptability define competitive advantage, Lumen is focused on enabling its customers across nearly every industry to thrive in a multicloud, AI-first landscape.

“We’re focused on building the backbone for the AI economy, connecting people, data, and applications with precision and intelligence,” says Ryan Asdourian, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Lumen.

To deliver on that promise externally, the company needed to undergo an internal transformation. Decades of operations had resulted in fragmented data environments, redundant systems, and inconsistent definitions. Siloed information, manual processes, and a lack of unified visibility slowed decision-making and hindered innovation.

“Marketing was especially impacted,” explains Jerod Ridge, Director of Data Engineering at Lumen. “Our job is to make the complex simple. But we needed better ways to collaborate, move faster, and get to real insights—not just raw data.”

Unifying data across the enterprise

Lumen didn’t just need a new analytics platform; it needed an end-to-end data and AI environment that could centralize access, streamline ingestion, and enable cross-functional collaboration. Already working within the Microsoft Azure ecosystem, the company chose Microsoft Fabric as its path forward.

With Fabric, Lumen replaced a patchwork of longstanding tools that required extensive manual configuration and kept developers, analysts, and business users operating in separate silos. “Fabric let us build on the familiarity, security, and scalability of Azure. It unites data flows, storage, analytics, and machine learning in a single experience,” says Ridge.

The team began by consolidating Lumen’s third-party marketing data into OneLake, the unified storage layer in Fabric. Previously, moving data from external sources—such as APIs, partner tools, and cloud databases—was slow and repetitive. It required redundant transfers and heavy data wrangling before it could be used in downstream analytics. Using OneLake lakehouse architecture, structured and unstructured data coexist natively in a centralized environment, eliminating staging bottlenecks and unnecessary duplication.

“OneLake allowed us to ingest once and use anywhere,” says Chad Hollingsworth, Cloud Architect at Lumen. “That flexibility is something we never had before.”

Transforming and activating data

The team was able to move transformation work, including cleaning, standardizing, joining, and reshaping data into Microsoft Spark Utilities–powered notebooks within Fabric. Engineers could then reshape data using Python and SQL without needing to spin up virtual machines or manage complex networking layers. What once demanded setting up virtual machines and configuring private networks can now be accomplished in a single interface. “In Fabric, we just open a notebook and start working. We don’t need a separate environment; it’s all integrated,” says Hollingsworth.

To accelerate ingestion and create business-ready datasets, the team used prebuilt connectors and Microsoft Spark Utilities. It also used the shortcuts feature in Fabric, which enables instant access to external data sources without physically moving the data. Additionally, mirroring capabilities allowed for real-time synchronization from REST APIs and external systems—no custom pipelines required.

“Mirroring changes everything,” says Ridge. “Now we can focus on business logic and transformation instead of spending our time wiring up data.”

Once transformed, data remains in OneLake. With Direct Lake integration in Fabric, Microsoft Power BI users can query that data directly, without importing it or relying on scheduled refreshes. This real-time access gives marketing and sales teams a governed, consistent view of key metrics. “There are no refresh cycles, no latency. It just works,” says William Whittenton, Senior Business Intelligence Developer at Lumen. “With Direct Lake and semantic models, we can develop faster, share dashboards instantly, and eliminate duplication.”

Gaining efficiency, insight, and governance

Beyond ingestion and transformation, Fabric helped Lumen address longstanding challenges around version control and governance. In the past, business logic lived in spreadsheets or personal files, making collaboration difficult and metrics inconsistent. With native GitHub interoperability and Fabric pipelines, the team can now manage source control, automate deployments, and publish governed data products that align with corporate policy.

As an early adopter of Microsoft 365 Copilot, Lumen is already seeing productivity gains. Copilot is embedded in notebooks and Power BI, helping teams write cleaner code, generate Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) expressions, and explore data using natural language. “Copilot used to feel like a novelty,” says Whittenton. “Now it’s speeding up our development cycles and making us more confident in the code we write.”

With its marketing data fully consolidated into OneLake, Lumen can now share governed datasets directly with sales, eliminating manual handoffs and duplicated effort. “In the last year alone, we’ve eliminated almost 10,000 manual hours through Microsoft-powered automation,” Ridge adds. “That’s time we now spend creating business value.”

Saving time and money

As early adopters within Lumen, the members of the marketing team are pioneers inside their own company. They were the first to secure Fabric capacity, to launch governed data products, and to automate near real-time data delivery between marketing and sales. “Fabric brings together all the pieces Microsoft already had—Spark, SQL, notebooks, Power BI—but in one cohesive platform,” says Ridge. “Now, instead of wrestling with systems, our teams are focused on impact.”

That impact is tangible. Fabric is enabling real-time data sharing across departments, strengthening lead targeting, and improving campaign ROI. “Every executive wants to know if they’re making the right decisions,” says Asdourian. “Fabric helps us connect all our data and actually see what’s working—across every campaign, every ad, every dollar.”

Data engineers and analysts have also seen their productivity soar. “We used to spend up to six hours a day copying data into SQL servers,” says Hollingsworth. “Now it’s all streamlined inside Fabric.”

By moving to the cloud, Lumen also avoided renewing costly third-party licenses and investing in additional on-premises hardware. Although specific figures are confidential, Ridge says the savings were substantial, reinforcing that switching to Microsoft Fabric was the right call.

Looking ahead: AI-driven decision-making

The team is also preparing for the next frontier: predictive analytics and intelligent automation. “We want Fabric to tell us where to spend our next dollar. That’s the future: not just analyzing what happened but recommending what to do next,” says Asdourian.

Ridge says Microsoft has been vital to the project’s success and will be central to Lumen’s ongoing innovation. Biweekly meetings with Microsoft helped the team navigate early adoption challenges and continue to help Lumen stay ahead of new feature releases as it moves forward. “It’s not just the great technology—it’s the great people,” Ridge emphasizes. “Microsoft has proven time and again that it is invested in our success. That’s made all the difference.”

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