Microsoft Fabric
Product Overview
Microsoft Fabric is Microsoft's unified data and analytics platform, bringing data integration, data engineering, data warehousing, real-time analytics, data science, and business intelligence together under one product, backed by a single, shared data store. Rather than licensing and connecting a collection of separate data tools, organizations subscribe to one platform where every workload shares the same underlying data and compute capacity. Below is an overview of what it includes and the value it delivers.
Microsoft Fabric
Designed for: Organizations that want to unify their data integration, engineering, warehousing, analytics, and reporting into a single, connected platform rather than a patchwork of separate tools.
What's Included
- OneLake, a single, unified data store shared across every workload, eliminating the need to copy or duplicate data between different tools
- Data Factory for integrating and moving data from a wide range of sources
- Data Engineering tools, including Spark-based notebooks, for preparing and transforming large volumes of data
- Data Warehouse capabilities for structured, high-performance analytics
- Data Science tools for building and deploying machine learning models
- Real-Time Intelligence for analyzing and acting on streaming data as it arrives
- Databases for operational, transactional workloads
- Power BI, fully integrated for building and sharing reports and dashboards
- Copilot built directly into Fabric, providing AI assistance across data preparation, analysis, and report creation
- A single, shared pool of compute capacity used across all of the above workloads, rather than separate licenses for each
Why It Matters for Your Business
Most organizations accumulate a patchwork of separate tools for moving data, transforming it, storing it, analyzing it, and reporting on it — each with its own license, its own copy of the data, and its own team of specialists to manage it.
Microsoft Fabric replaces that patchwork with a single, connected platform where every workload draws from the same shared data store. Data doesn't need to be duplicated or moved between systems as it flows from raw ingestion through to a finished report.
This significantly reduces the operational overhead of maintaining a modern data platform. It also makes it easier for different teams — data engineers, analysts, and business users — to collaborate around the same trusted, up-to-date data, rather than working from disconnected copies.
Built-in Copilot assistance further lowers the skill barrier for working with data, helping business users get more out of the platform without needing to be data specialists themselves.
Billing Structure
Microsoft Fabric is licensed differently from most other Microsoft products: rather than a per-user fee, an organization purchases a capacity subscription.
That capacity provides a shared pool of compute power used across every workload in Fabric — data pipelines, notebooks, warehouses, real-time analytics, and Power BI reports all draw from the same pool.
Capacity is available in a range of sizes to match the scale of the organization, from a small entry-level tier suited to smaller teams or initial evaluation, up to large-scale tiers for enterprise workloads.
At a certain capacity threshold, report viewers no longer require an individual Power BI license to view shared content — which can significantly change the economics for organizations with a large audience of report consumers.
Capacity can typically be purchased on a flexible, pay-as-you-go basis or at a discount through a longer-term reservation. Usage-based storage charges apply separately for data stored in OneLake.
Have Questions? We're Here to Help.
Our team can help you identify the plan that best matches your organization's needs and guide you through setup.