From Tableau, Qlik, Cognos, MicroStrategy, Salesforce, Lotus Notes, Slack, Box, Dropbox, Confluence — onto Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft 365, Teams, Dynamics 365. Governance-first consolidation.
By Errin O'Connor, Founder & Chief AI Architect, EPC Group
EPC Group's Microsoft Stack Consolidation practice migrates enterprises off fragmented analytics and collaboration platforms — Tableau, Qlik, Cognos, MicroStrategy, Salesforce, Lotus Notes, Slack, Box, Dropbox, Confluence — onto the Microsoft stack: Power BI + Microsoft Fabric for analytics, Microsoft 365 + Teams for collaboration, Dynamics 365 for sales and service, Microsoft Entra ID for identity. Governance-first methodology. Hundreds of consolidations completed since 2010. Senior architect named on every Statement of Work.
Three drivers EPC Group sees repeatedly as customers re-evaluate fragmented analytics and collaboration estates:
Parallel analytics (Tableau + Snowflake + ETL) and collaboration (Slack + Zoom + Confluence + Box) typically cost 30-50% more than a consolidated Microsoft 365 E5 + Fabric footprint.
Microsoft Purview, Sentinel, Defender, and Entra ID provide a single governance plane. Tableau, Salesforce, and Slack each break that plane and require parallel controls.
Microsoft 365 Copilot, Power BI Copilot, Fabric Copilot, and Security Copilot integrate natively with the Microsoft stack. Multi-vendor estates either skip AI or build parallel governance.
Six common consolidation patterns. Timelines + fixed-fee ranges based on EPC Group delivery history.
Dashboard-by-dashboard wave migration. Parallel running 4-8 weeks per wave. Semantic-model design + RLS migration.
Most complex consolidation type. Schema migration, formula translation, Lightning → Power Platform conversion, dedicated change-management track.
EPC Group has shipped these since 2007. Notes-app re-platform to SharePoint / Power Apps. Email migration via Microsoft Migration Manager.
Channel + DM + content migration. Identity federation during dual-running. Custom-app re-platform to Teams apps.
Content migration with Purview sensitivity-label propagation. Permission mapping. Wiki / page re-platform to SharePoint pages.
Most cost-saving migration type — typically 35-50% TCO reduction. Schema migration via Fabric Mirroring or direct ingest.
Cutting over from Tableau to Power BI in a single weekend always fails. EPC Group ships 8-12 week waves with 4-8 weeks of parallel running per wave for validation.
Lifting Tableau extracts directly into Power BI datasets produces slow reports + technical debt. The migration is the right moment to redesign for star-schema + DirectLake.
Salesforce → Dynamics migrations fail at adoption when sales reps are told "use the new tool" without persona-specific training and executive sponsorship. EPC Group ships a dedicated change-management track on every CRM consolidation.
Without sensitivity labels + Purview integration during the migration itself, you ship a clean Power BI tenant on Day 1 that immediately accumulates ungoverned dashboards. Governance must ship WITH the migration.
Most consolidations capture pre-migration baseline but skip post-migration TCO reporting, so the executive sponsor cannot prove the ROI. EPC Group ships TCO baseline + 6/12/18-month TCO reports as standard deliverables.
Three drivers: (1) Cost — running parallel analytics (Tableau + Snowflake + ETL tool) or collaboration (Slack + Zoom + Confluence + Box) stacks typically costs 30-50% more than a consolidated Microsoft 365 E5 + Fabric F-SKU footprint when you include licensing, integration, and admin headcount. (2) Governance — Microsoft Purview, Sentinel, Defender, and Entra ID provide a single governance plane that Tableau / Salesforce / Slack each break. (3) AI readiness — Microsoft 365 Copilot, Power BI Copilot, Microsoft Fabric Copilot, and Microsoft Security Copilot integrate natively only with the Microsoft stack. Multi-vendor estates either skip AI or build a parallel governance burden.
Phase 1 Discovery (4-6 weeks, $50K-$100K fixed-fee): dataset inventory, dashboard cataloging, DAX-vs-Tableau-formula complexity scoring, refresh-schedule mapping, capacity sizing. Phase 2 Foundation (8-12 weeks): Power BI / Microsoft Fabric capacity provisioning, semantic model design, certified dataset endorsement strategy, row-level security migration, governance framework. Phase 3 Wave Migration (16-32 weeks): dashboard-by-dashboard migration in 8-12 week waves, parallel-running for validation, decommissioning Tableau capacity as waves complete. Phase 4 Adoption (continuous): user training, Champion Network, performance optimization.
Salesforce → Microsoft Dynamics 365 migrations are the most complex consolidations EPC Group ships. Typical timeline 9-18 months. Key challenges: custom object schema migration, formula and validation rule translation, Salesforce Lightning component → Power Platform conversion, integration to Marketing + Service + Field Service modules, and change management for the Sales team (who tend to resist CRM changes). EPC Group methodology: dual-CRM operation for 4-8 weeks during cutover, automated data migration, formula translation tooling, and a dedicated change-management track. Pricing $500K-$2M depending on customization complexity and user count.
Yes — and this is a common misconception. Microsoft Fabric ingests from AWS (S3, Redshift, Athena), Google Cloud (BigQuery, GCS), Snowflake, Databricks, and on-prem sources. OneLake shortcuts make cross-cloud data appear local. Microsoft 365 Copilot grounds on Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Workday via Microsoft Graph connectors. The consolidated Microsoft stack is not the same as "single cloud" — it is "single governance plane across heterogeneous data sources." For organizations that genuinely need multi-cloud orchestration, EPC Group frequently delivers the Microsoft layer alongside a multi-cloud global SI per the [specialist vs global SI](/microsoft-consulting-specialist-vs-global-si) hybrid model.
Analytics consolidation (Tableau + Snowflake + Fivetran + Looker → Power BI + Microsoft Fabric): 25-40% TCO reduction typical over a 3-year horizon, factoring in license, ingestion, compute, and admin headcount. Collaboration consolidation (Slack + Zoom + Confluence + Box → Microsoft 365 E5): 30-50% TCO reduction typical. CRM consolidation (Salesforce → Dynamics 365): 15-30% TCO reduction typical (Dynamics 365 is not always cheaper than Salesforce per-license, but the integration savings with Microsoft 365 + Teams + Power BI + Copilot compound). EPC Group provides a fixed-fee TCO Assessment ($25K-$50K) at engagement kickoff so the customer sees the math before the larger commitment.
Consolidation enables Copilot. Copilot grounds best when documents, conversations, CRM records, and analytics live in one Microsoft tenant under one Purview governance plane. A multi-vendor estate forces a choice between (a) deploying Copilot only on the Microsoft portion (limited value) or (b) building parallel governance for each vendor (high cost). Consolidation solves both. EPC Group sequences consolidation BEFORE broad Copilot deployment so the Copilot rollout maximizes grounding surface from Day 1.
Fixed-fee TCO Assessment available before any larger commitment (fixed-fee, 4-6 weeks).
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