Service · Microsoft Fabric
Microsoft Fabric implementation for South Africa — the AI-ready data foundation.
OneLake, Direct Lake, medallion Lakehouse and Copilot in Fabric — engineered inside your Microsoft 365 tenant so Power BI, Copilot and Azure AI agents ground on data you can trust.
Why Fabric
AI readiness starts with your data foundation — not your model choice.
Every South African leadership team is being asked how they'll use AI. Almost none of them have the data foundation to answer honestly. Copilot, Azure OpenAI and every serious AI agent are only as trustworthy as the data they read — and most businesses' data still lives in fragmented Sage extracts, SYSPRO views, SQL stored procedures and ageing Azure Data Lakes that were never designed to be grounded on.
Microsoft Fabric is the foundation Microsoft themselves are building Copilot on. One tenant-wide lake (OneLake), one storage format (Delta Parquet), one governance model, one semantic layer — and Direct Lake so Power BI reads it at Import-mode speed with no refresh cycle.
We build that foundation. Then Copilot agents and Power BI dashboards have something reliable to sit on.
What we build
Six pillars of a production Fabric implementation
OneLake — one lake for the whole tenant
A single, governed Delta Parquet lake shared across every Fabric workload. No storage accounts to wire up, no duplicated copies, one security and lineage model — the foundation Copilot and AI agents need to answer reliably.
Medallion Lakehouse architecture
Bronze / silver / gold layering built the way Microsoft recommends — raw ingest, cleansed and conformed, then business-ready. Modelled for query performance and for Copilot / semantic model grounding.
Direct Lake semantic models
Power BI reads directly from OneLake at Import-mode speed — no ETL to a separate model, no refresh window, no stale data. The single biggest reason to move a mature Power BI estate onto Fabric.
Data Factory pipelines
Ingest from Sage 200 Evolution, Sage 300, Sage X3, SYSPRO, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, REST APIs and on-prem systems — orchestrated inside Fabric, landing straight in OneLake as governed Delta tables.
Real-Time Intelligence
Event streams, KQL databases and real-time dashboards for IoT telemetry, transaction feeds, operational alerts and any workload where seconds matter — same lake, same governance.
Copilot in Fabric & AI grounding
Once your data foundation is right, Copilot in Fabric, Copilot for Power BI and Azure AI Foundry agents can be grounded on trusted, permissioned data — not a scraped export or a fragile prompt.
How we sequence it
The AI-readiness sequence, in the order it actually works
01
Consolidate the data foundation
One tenant-wide OneLake, ingested from every system that matters — Sage, SYSPRO, Dynamics, SQL, SaaS. Delta Parquet, versioned, lineage tracked, permissioned.
02
Model it for humans and for AI
A medallion Lakehouse and a Direct Lake semantic model — the same layer that powers Power BI dashboards is what Copilot and downstream AI agents will ground on.
03
Govern before you generate
Row Level Security, sensitivity labels, workspace roles and Fabric domain governance — set up before Copilot goes near the data, not after.
04
Layer Copilot & agents on top
Copilot in Fabric for authors, Copilot for Power BI for consumers, and custom Copilot Studio / Azure AI Foundry agents that query the same governed data through the semantic model.
Where we work
Microsoft Fabric implementation across South Africa
Remote-first delivery into your own Microsoft 365 tenant. City doesn't change the team, price or timeline.
Johannesburg & Gauteng
Microsoft Fabric implementations for Gauteng finance, manufacturing, logistics and retail businesses — delivered remotely into your Microsoft 365 tenant, on your data.
Cape Town & Western Cape
Cape Town fintech, e-commerce and professional services teams run their Fabric OneLake, Lakehouse and Direct Lake builds with us over Microsoft Teams. Same senior consultants, no travel fees.
Durban & KZN
Durban, Pinetown and broader KZN businesses use us for Fabric Data Factory pipelines, Sage and SYSPRO ingestion and Direct Lake semantic models — all remote.
Rest of South Africa
Pretoria, Stellenbosch, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and beyond — anywhere with a stable connection. We also serve clients across Africa, the UK, EU and North America.
Your tenant, your data
Every build happens inside your Microsoft 365 / Azure tenant. We never take custody of your data.
Fixed-fee, senior-led
Scoped and quoted up front. Delivered by senior consultants — not a bench of juniors.
Copilot-ready by design
The Fabric foundation we build is designed to be grounded on by Copilot in Fabric, Copilot for Power BI and Azure AI Foundry agents.
FAQ
Microsoft Fabric — common questions
What is Microsoft Fabric and why does it matter for AI readiness?
Microsoft Fabric is the unified SaaS data platform underneath Power BI — OneLake storage, Lakehouse, Warehouse, Data Factory, Data Engineering, Data Science and Real-Time Intelligence all sharing the same copy of your data. It matters for AI readiness because Microsoft Copilot, Azure OpenAI and any grounded AI agent are only as reliable as the data foundation they read from. Fabric gives you one governed lake — with lineage, security and semantic modelling — that Copilot in Fabric, Copilot for Power BI and Azure AI Foundry agents can query safely.
How much does a Microsoft Fabric implementation cost in South Africa?
A first production Fabric footprint — OneLake, a Lakehouse, a Medallion (bronze / silver / gold) pattern, one or two priority data sources and a Direct Lake semantic model — typically lands between R 180 000 and R 450 000. Wider builds (multiple domains, real-time intelligence, Warehouse workloads, Copilot enablement) run higher. We quote fixed-fee after a free scoping call. Fabric capacity licensing (F-SKU) is separate and is paid directly to Microsoft.
Do I need Microsoft Fabric if I already use Power BI?
Not always. If you're running a handful of reports on flat sources, Power BI on its own is fine — see our Power BI & Fabric page. Fabric earns its place when you have multiple data sources, want real-time or near-real-time analytics, need to ground Copilot / AI on trusted data, or when refresh windows and duplicated pipelines have become the bottleneck. Direct Lake mode on Fabric lets Power BI read straight from OneLake at Import-mode speed with no refresh cycle.
What is OneLake and how is it different from a normal data lake?
OneLake is Microsoft Fabric's built-in, tenant-wide data lake. It stores everything in the open Delta Parquet format, is automatically indexed for Direct Lake reads, and is shared across every Fabric workload — Lakehouse, Warehouse, Power BI, Data Science — with a single security and lineage model. Unlike a self-managed Azure Data Lake, there's no separate storage account, no manual mount, and no duplicated copies of the same data.
Can Microsoft Fabric integrate with Sage 200, Sage 300, SYSPRO and Dynamics?
Yes. We build Fabric Data Factory pipelines and custom connectors that ingest data from Sage 200 Evolution, Sage 300, Sage X3, SYSPRO and Microsoft Dynamics — through direct SQL, the on-premises data gateway, REST APIs or Azure Functions. The data lands in OneLake as governed Delta tables, ready for Power BI, Copilot grounding and downstream AI agents.
How does Copilot in Fabric work?
Copilot in Fabric is Microsoft's generative AI layer that sits on top of your OneLake data. Once your data foundation is in place, Copilot can help authors build Power BI reports, write DAX and SQL, generate Dataflows and Notebooks, and answer natural-language questions grounded in your semantic model. The quality of Copilot's answers is a direct function of how well your Fabric data model, lineage and permissions are set up — which is exactly what we build for.
Get the data foundation right — before you buy another Copilot licence.
Free scoping call. We'll show you what a production Fabric footprint would look like for your business.