A blueprint leadership could act on: how the move off on-prem SQL would work, what it would cost, and why Fabric was the right platform to build on.
Five design moves, framed by the problem they answered, took the organization from open questions about cost and platform choice to an architecture leadership signed off on. Follow the pipe.
Scroll to walk the designThe client needed a clear architectural blueprint for moving from an aging on-prem SQL environment to Microsoft Fabric. The legacy BI estate could not scale for growing data volumes, self-service, or executive reporting.
The on-prem estate still ran, but it had nowhere left to grow.
Licensing, pricing, and long-term utility usage were unknowns, and it was unclear whether to adopt Fabric or stay with traditional Azure data tools. There was no executive-ready view of a future-state platform to decide against.
Every one of these had to be answered before leadership could commit.
We led an architecture design engagement aligned to our STEAM framework, defining a future-proof path from on-prem SQL into Fabric — ingestion and processing sized for their big-data volumes rather than their current ones.
A defined path from on-prem SQL into a governed Fabric platform.
A direct comparison against Azure-based alternatives — Synapse and Azure Data Lake — with the trade-offs stated plainly rather than argued away, so the recommendation could be tested instead of taken on trust.
A recommendation the BI team could test rather than trust.
A pricing and utility model set out expected compute, storage, and capacity consumption across pipeline and analytics workloads, turning the largest open question of the engagement into a number leadership could plan against.
Figures are illustrative — the model gave leadership a base to plan against.
Bronze, Silver, and Gold layers were mapped to governance and scale, with centralized Power BI semantic models carrying governed self-service on top — alongside security, workspace structure, and CI/CD readiness.
Governed layers underneath, self-service on top.
A full executive deck summarized ROI, readiness, and Fabric's long-term value, paired with a phased roadmap — readiness, proof of value, then scale — covering immediate next steps, risks, and expected outcomes.
One picture of the transition, shared by leadership and the BI team.
We engaged Dataracity to lead the design and recommendation phase of one of our client's enterprise data architecture projects on the Microsoft platform. From the outset their expertise was evident — they introduced us to Microsoft Fabric and provided a robust framework rooted in industry best practices. Beyond high-level strategy, they delivered tangible assets including detailed system architecture diagrams, data flow charts, and comprehensive price modeling. Their technical execution is just as impressive as their strategic planning. I highly recommend Dataracity for any organisation looking to modernise their data stack with precision and clarity.
Shelly JantzenFounder · E2 ConsultingA small delivery team, named and accountable from kickoff to go-live.
Luke Matthews
Co-Founder, Head of Project Delivery & Data Architecture
Amanda Buthelezi
Co-Founder, Project Lead (BI & Data Strategy)
Bring us your current estate and the questions leadership keeps asking. We'll come back with the target architecture, the cost model behind it, and the roadmap to get there.
