Two years ago, we introduced Microsoft Fabric to Azure Synapse users as a bold new direction for analytics—one that promised unification, simplicity, scale. Today, that promise has matured into a complete platform that’s not just ready for enterprises, it’s built for them.
To be very clear: Synapse continues to be supported. We will fix bugs, patch security vulnerabilities, and ensure stability for existing workloads. But the future of analytics is evolving rapidly, and Fabric is now the best option on the market to build that future.
Below, we’ll dive into why Microsoft Fabric is the best and easiest modernization path for your Azure Synapse analytics stack, and how to get started with migrations.
Ultimate Modernization Destination for Analytics
Fabric empowers every part of the organization—from executives and customer service to sales, marketing, HR, and legal. Not merely a platform for data engineers, Microsoft Fabric is the only analytics platform designed for every part of the organization, as a result of its tight integration with business productivity suites like Microsoft 365.
And analytics is more than just dashboards—it’s about empowering business users to make decisions grounded in trusted data, at scale.
With Fabric data agents, Copilot in Power BI, and strong integrations with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure AI Foundry, Fabric enables conversational analytics, automated reasoning, and secure multi-agent orchestration. These tools allow users to interact with data like they would with a virtual analyst—reasoning over tables, files, real-time events and even unstructured data, across OneLake and external sources.
Fabric developed into the fastest-growing data and analytics platform in Microsoft’s history. With over 28,000 customers and 60% revenue growth, it’s not just gaining traction, it’s setting the pace.
This momentum is driven by rapid product maturation. Fabric now offers:
Enterprise-grade security and governance: Built-in CI/CD, compliance and governance Enterprise Security features, such as Private Link, and Outbound Access Protection. Data is centralized in OneLake, simplifying data sharing, eliminating silos and ensuring consistency across the organization, while protected by Customer Managed Keys.
AI-native architecture: Fabric is designed for the AI era, with Copilot embedded throughout. Business users can interact with data in natural language, generate insights instantly, and automate reasoning steps—all without compromising security.
Multi-cloud reach: Microsoft OneLake spans Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Snowflake, Databricks, and on-prem sources—with shortcuts and mirroring that eliminate duplication and simplify access.
Fabric isn’t just more capable—it’s faster and generates significant cost savings.
Fabric Data Factory is built on tried and tested capability that is unique in the industry and the most widely adopted data integration stack in the industry. Fabric Data Factory is a fusion of standalone experiences that are now brought into a cohesive offering: Azure Data Factory (pro-grade data integration in Azure) and Power Query (citizen data integration in Power BI, Excel, Dynamics).
In addition, Data Factory is AI-powered by Copilot. Copilot for Data Factory enables you to author, debug and monitor pipelines and dataflows with minimal effort. Additionally, Copilot is built into the Data Factory experiences. This means you can use AI to compose your data integration solution wherever you need it (e.g. creating custom columns via natural language prompts, using Copilot to compose your pipeline expressions, and more)
Learn more about how Fabric Data Factory is continuously innovating and enabling cost-effectiveness and performance improvements.
Are yourSparkworkloadstoo expensive? They don’t have to be. Any Spark workload will cost you less in Fabric, when using features like Fabric’s new native engine for Spark or High Concurrency mode. And it is faster, too, up to 3.5x faster than Synapse Spark and 3.7x faster than HDInsight for TPC-DS 1TB workloads.
Is your Data Warehouse Gen2 capacitytoo inflexible or slow? Fabric Data Warehouse, redesigned to an elastic, cloud-ready architecture, runs faster than Synapse Gen2, without complex tuning and maintenance rituals. Fabric Data Warehouse also costs significantly less for the same workloads. In fact, Fabric Data Warehouse can now handle workloads that Synapse DW simply could not complete.
These are real-world results that translate into faster insights, lower costs, and better scalability.
Easiest Modernization Path
We’ve invested heavily in making migration from Synapse to Fabric seamless.
To start, all your data in ADLSg2 is immediately available in Fabric through the magic of OneLake shortcuts.
For each component of your current analytics solution, we have migration tools ready, and more in progress:
From Azure Data Factory and Synapse pipelines to Fabric Data Factory
Your Azure Data Factory (ADF) and Synapse pipelines can be easy migrated to Fabric Data Factory. Migrating from ADF and Synapse pipelines to Fabric Data Factory offers several benefits:
Integrated pipeline features like email and Teams activities for message routing during pipeline execution.
Workspace integration with OneLake for streamlined analytics management.
Flexible semantic data model refreshes with integrated pipeline activities.
Learn more on how you can migrate your Azure Data Factory and Synapse pipelines to Fabric Data Factory.
From Spark workloads to Fabric’s new native engine for Spark
Your Spark workloads can be lifted and shifted to Fabric’s new native engine for Spark, using our Notebook migration tools, which can help you, regardless of which flavor of Spark you are using today.
“We transitioned from Azure Synapse to Microsoft Fabric seamlessly, migrating 600+ notebooks and pipelines while consolidating 4,500+ data objects into 87 Fabric lakehouses. This enhanced overall data platform efficiency and reduced cost by 3.2x, enabling over 450 OBOS users to leverage Fabric for faster, deeper insights.” – Dag Erlend Berger, Delivery Manager, Obos
From Data Warehouse to Fabric Data Warehouse
Your Data Warehouse business logic (tables, views, stored procedures) can be migrated automatically to a Fabric Data Warehouse, using our built-in, AI-assisted Migration Assistant. Fabric Data Warehouse runs the same solid, trusted T-SQL. With no need for lossy translations, your existing queries and skills transfer directly.
“Migrating was seamless thanks to the Migration Assistant. We transitioned without disrupting delivery, and post-migration, we’ve 4x our environments to boost development throughput—while cutting costs by 50% compared to Synapse. Fabric’s support for T-SQL and stored procedures made adoption smooth for our teams.” – Denis Zorenko, Tech Lead, Data & Analytics, Kantar
Beyond migrating individual components, Fabric is designed to support simpler, more cost-efficient analytics architectures. We have analyzed the most common architecture patterns used by Synapse customers and developed detailed recommendations for making the best out of Microsoft Fabric’s capabilities.
Fabric is not just compatible with existing Synapse architectures—it’s familiar, yet much better, and it’s designed to make your transition smooth, predictable, and low-risk.
What’s Next?
If you’re running Synapse today, know that you’re not being left behind—you’re being invited forward.
Fabric delivers greater speed, lower costs, enhanced security, and increased capabilities. Built for the era of AI, and designed around your needs, Fabric gives you the tools, performance, and governance to migrate your notebooks, pipelines, or entire workloads with confidence.
Major performance improvements are here for Fabric Environment! Environment publishing is now up to 2.5x faster, and session startup speeds have improved by up to 3x, delivering a smoother and more reliable experience for developers. What’s Improved What’s Next? New library installation mode for lightweight packages and quick iteration is around the corner. Stay tuned …
Continue reading “Fabric Environment Library Management Performance Improvement”
