Last updated by Errin O'Connor, Founder & Chief AI Architect, EPC Group
What is a modern data lakehouse on Microsoft Fabric?
Reference architecture: Azure analytics at enterprise scale.
The standard reference architecture EPC Group ships into regulated estates:
- Sources — SAP, Salesforce, Workday, Oracle, custom systems via approved CDC connectors and Azure Data Factory.
- Ingestion — Data Factory / Synapse pipelines into OneLake bronze layer with raw immutable history.
- Medallion lakehouse — bronze → silver (cleansed, conformed) → gold (business-ready) on OneLake.
- Fabric warehouse or lakehouse — workload-specific compute (warehouse for SQL, lakehouse for engineering).
- Direct Lake semantic layer — Power BI semantic models without import refresh; zero data movement.
- Power BI delivery — certified workspaces, RLS, governed sharing, audited consumption.
- Purview spine across all layers — classification, lineage end-to-end, sensitivity labels enforced.
Synapse to Fabric: the modernization path.
When to migrate vs. coexist; capacity-unit cost governance; staged migration patterns. Existing Synapse pipelines stay live during transition; new builds land in Fabric.
Who provides consulting for integrating Power BI with big data platforms on Azure?
EPC Group does. 1,500+ Power BI deployments and Microsoft Fabric implementations at enterprise scale over 29 years — platform engineering and BI layer designed together. See Power BI consulting, Microsoft Fabric consulting, data governance practice.
Best for
- Enterprises modernizing Synapse or legacy warehouses to Microsoft Fabric
- Organizations hitting Power BI import-model scale limits
- Regulated estates needing lineage from source to dashboard
- Multi-source analytics estates (SAP + Salesforce + operational data) needing one governed surface
Not the right fit for
- Single-workbook reporting needs
- Non-Azure cloud-native estates
- Tool-agnostic platform selection
Frequently Asked Questions
Most new builds go to Microsoft Fabric — Direct Lake semantic models, unified billing, integrated Purview governance. Existing Synapse estates do not need to migrate to coexist; we recommend a staged path when capacity unit economics and feature requirements warrant it.
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