Free Microsoft Fabric governance for one tenant: one view of every workspace, and how to get it
What Fabric Control's free governance tier shows for one Azure tenant (health, capacity, refresh outcomes, drift and who has access) and how to get it.
Notes from building data platforms
What we have learned building on Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Fabric and Power BI, written down: architecture, migration, governance and analytics. New articles are added regularly.
33 articles
BI Managed Services: What It Solved, and What Replaced It
Managed BI solved a real problem: who keeps reporting alive after go-live. Why the staffed model failed, and what changes when the platform does the work.
Governance by Design: Automatic, Not Manual
Why manual governance decays between audits, and how governance by design encodes standards, enforces them continuously and captures lineage as data moves.
Why We Walked Away from the Billable-Hour Model
Why the billable hour works against clients in data work, and what changed when we replaced it with a platform that sells durable capability, not time.
Migrating SSIS to Azure: A Modernization Playbook
How to migrate SSIS to Azure: assess the estate first, pick lift-and-shift, re-engineering or retirement per package, then migrate in validated waves.
Microsoft Fabric Capacity Monitoring: What to Watch
What to watch in Microsoft Fabric capacity: utilization trends, consumption by workload, throttling, bursting and cost, so you act before users notice.
How to Evaluate a Healthcare Data Platform
How to evaluate a pharmacy or healthcare data platform on compliance, data lineage and governance, with the questions to ask a vendor before you commit.
Lakehouse ODS vs. Traditional Data Warehouse
How a traditional data warehouse and a lakehouse operational data store differ on structure, data variety and freshness, and when each one, or both, fits.
Agent-Operated Data Infrastructure Explained
What agent-operated data infrastructure means: agents build, maintain, monitor and govern the data lifecycle while senior practitioners own the outcome.
What Is a Data Control Plane for Microsoft Fabric?
What a data control plane for Microsoft Fabric does: capacity monitoring, event stream observability and governance in one view, and when an estate needs one.
What Is an AI-Native Data Platform
What makes a data platform AI-native: agents run the data lifecycle under senior practitioners, how that differs from BI consulting, and the caveats to check.
Why Multi-Source Data Is the Real Analytics Challenge (and How to Solve It)
What poor data management costs, the signs of a data problem, and five steps to fix it: audit, governance, integration, quality processes and monitoring.
The Invisible Analytics Revolution: Why Embedded BI Is Eating the Dashboard
Why scattered data leaves businesses blind, where analytics pays off in customers, operations, finance and risk, and what to look for in a data partner.
Transforming Business Intelligence: The Role of AI in Data Analytics
How AI changes business intelligence: faster analysis, machine learning that flags anomalies, insight from unstructured data, and automation of routine work.
Power BI August 2025 Update: Revolutionary Features Transform Data Analytics
The Power BI August 2025 update: Copilot and natural language features, semantic model refresh templates, org apps, APIs and embedding, and new visuals.
Improve Your Business With Data Visualization | Power BI
Steps to better Power BI data visualization: pick key metrics, design interactive dashboards, use custom visuals and AI, optimize for mobile and train users.
Unlocking Business Insights with Azure Data Lake
What Azure Data Lake is, how its Store and Analytics components work, and its features: scalable storage, real-time processing, security and integration.
Microsoft Azure vs AWS
Azure and AWS compared on services, pricing, scalability, global infrastructure, hybrid cloud, machine learning and support, with the pros and cons of each.
Why More Businesses Choose Microsoft Azure Cloud
Why businesses choose Microsoft Azure: Microsoft product integration, familiar developer tools, global data centers, security and compliance, and scaling.
Power BI Releases Advancements in Reporting, Data Connectivity & Visuals
What a Power BI release added: a new format pane, easier navigators, an Azure Synapse connector, a Google Sheets connector and new AppSource visuals.
Gain the Competitive Edge with Power BI and Data Analytics
How BI and analytics tools speed up decisions, improve operations, create a single source of truth and predict opportunities, and what sets Power BI apart.
What is Microsoft Azure Data Factory?
What Azure Data Factory is and how to use it: create a data factory, define datasets, linked services and activities, then schedule and monitor pipelines.
Enhance Your Business with Data Visualization using Power BI
How Power BI helps a business turn data into decisions: interactive dashboards, data modeling, custom visuals, hundreds of data sources and cost analysis.
IaaS, SaaS, PaaS, and XaaS: Cloud-Based Service Models Explained
What IaaS, SaaS, PaaS and XaaS each provide, with example providers for the first three, and how the cloud service models compare and build on each other.
Supercharge Your Application with Embedded Analytics: A Comprehensive Guide
Why software vendors embed analytics in their applications, the challenges of building analytics in-house, and what Power BI offers as an embedded option.
Seamlessly Transitioning Your SSIS Projects to Azure Data Factory
A three-step guide to moving SSIS projects to Azure Data Factory: assess your packages, prepare the Azure environment, then convert and adjust the packages.
Boost Your Biz IQ: Black Friday FB Posts for BI!
Tips for Black Friday posts on Facebook: eye-catching visuals, urgency and giveaways, plus how to use post analytics and comments to refine your campaigns.
Exploring the Pros and Cons of Microsoft Azure Data Lake
The pros and cons of Azure Data Lake: scalability, Azure integration, security and pay-as-you-go cost, weighed against complexity, governance and performance.
How PowerBI Business Intelligence Improves Business Productivity
How Power BI improves productivity: dashboards enriched with Excel, Power Apps and Visio content, embedded in Teams or SharePoint, or exported to PowerPoint.
Leverage Your Big Data and Gain Insights with These Top Analytics Tools
Why so much big data goes unused, and a look at analytics tools that can help: Azure HDInsight, SAP Analytics Cloud, Apache Hadoop and MongoDB for analytics.
Microsoft Azure Leads the Industry for Hybrid Cloud Environments
Why Microsoft Azure leads in hybrid cloud: its on-premises roots, support for connecting datacenters to the cloud, and PaaS tools for application developers.
Reasons to Migrate to Microsoft Azure Cloud
Why migrate to Microsoft Azure: little upfront capital, consumption pricing, easier SQL Server integration, and why a migration assessment comes first.
Harness the Power of Power BI
What Power BI offers: Power BI Desktop, the Power BI service in Pro and Premium, and mobile apps, so non-technical users can analyze and share their data.
Tell us what you are building.
A platform to build, a migration to plan, or one of our products to evaluate. It starts with a conversation, and you get a scope and a flat fee before any work starts.