Cross-Cloud Data Movement with Best-in-Class Connectivity: What’s New and What’s Next in Fabric Data Factory
Microsoft Fabric is redefining the modern, AI‑ready data estate—bringing data, governance, and compute together on a unified SaaS platform built for mission‑critical workloads. By converging analytics, security, and operations on OneLake, Fabric accelerates time‑to‑value with consistent governance. Trusted by thousands of customers across industries, Fabric turns fragmented data into a strategic advantage for any business.
At its core, Fabric Data Factory delivers seamless, enterprise-grade data integration across clouds and environments, breaking down silos and unlocking new value—whether your data lives in Azure, other clouds, or on-premises. With petabyte-scale performance, a rapidly growing connector library, and secure access to your most critical datasets, Fabric Data Factory makes data movement effortless and flexible, supporting bulk copy, incremental copy, and native change data capture (CDC) replication to meet your ever-growing data delivery needs.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the latest innovations in cross-cloud data movement and enterprise connectivity that we unveiled during the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference in Vienna, and how Fabric Data Factory is powering the future of data integration.
Cross-Cloud Data Movement at Petabyte-scale with Copy Job
Moving data across clouds and on-premises at scale is a massive challenge for any organization. Copy Job in Fabric Data Factory streamlines this complexity with managed execution – delivering petabyte-scale data movement with built-in support for bulk, incremental, and native change data capture (CDC) replication. By optimizing throughput, error handling, and providing built-in observability, Copy Job reduces operational overhead while keeping data delivery reliable as your data estate grows. Combined with network-compliant, secure access to sources behind firewalls, your data gets where it needs to be—reliably and on time, every time.
I can see a significant improvement in the Copy Job experience, especially in terms of simplicity and support for incremental copy compared to Copy Activity in pipelines. It’s clear that the product team has done a lot of work behind the scenes to make this happen!
Yiming Zhu, Data Science & Engineering @ Mercedes-Benz Group AG
With Copy Job, you’re never locked into a single cloud. Whether it’s Azure, AWS, Snowflake, or other platforms, you can move and distribute data at petabyte-scale – powered by Fabric Data Factory’s extensive connectivity. Secure, network-compliant access lets you confidently connect to both on-premises and cloud sources behind firewalls, ensuring your protected data remains secure. And with our connector library expanding every week, you’re always supported for all your business-critical sources and destinations.
Additionally, we are proud to announce the following new and exciting capabilities—making this the best version of Copy job to date.
- Copy Job Activity: Orchestrate Copy Jobs directly within pipelines, enabling automated, scalable data movement as part of your end-to-end integration workflows.
- Connection Parameterization via Variable library: Streamline CI/CD by parameterizing connection details—deploy the same Copy Job across dev, test, and production environments without modifying your Copy Job.
- Fabric Lakehouse Change Data Feeds (CDF): Capture and replicate changes from Fabric Lakehouse tables, allowing Copy Job to copy your data changes incrementally.
- CDC Merge into SQL Database & Snowflake: Effortlessly merge inserts, updates, and deletes into SQL Database in Fabric and Snowflake, keeping your destinations continuously synchronized with source changes.
- Copy Assistant in Pipeline Powered by Copy Job: Simplify pipeline setup with the enhanced Copy Assistant—quickly configure Copy Jobs and leverage all advanced features with just a few clicks.
Generally Available with Copy Job:
- VNet Gateway Support in Copy Job & Copy Activity: Securely access data across firewalls and network boundaries, ensuring compliance and connectivity for even the most protected sources.
- Incremental Copy Reset: Reset or reseed incremental Copy Jobs on demand, giving you full control to remediate data drift or restart sync cycles whenever needed.
- Iceberg & JSON File Format Support: Seamlessly move data in Iceberg and JSON formats, expanding your integration options for modern analytics and diverse data sources.
- Multiple Schedules Support: Schedule a single Copy Job to run on multiple timelines—daily, weekly, or custom intervals—optimizing data delivery for your business needs.
- Database Views Support: Use database views as sources for both full and incremental copy, simplifying complex data ingestion scenarios.
To learn more details about the new Copy Job features, visit Simplifying Data Ingestion with Copy Job – Connection Parameterization, Expanded CDC and Connectors and Secure Your Data Movement with Copy Job and Virtual Network Data Gateway.
From Silos to Seamless: Enterprise Connectivity for Cross-Cloud Data Movement
In a landscape where data is everywhere, seamless connectivity across platforms and environments has become essential to transform fragmented data estates into actionable insights. Fabric Data Factory’s connectivity ecosystem is built to break down barriers—with over 170 enterprise-grade connectors and secure, network-compliant access via On-Premises and VNet data gateways, organizations can move data efficiently and securely across any cloud, bridging firewalls and private networks while meeting enterprise security and governance standards.
This robust connectivity doesn’t just enable Copy Job to deliver petabyte-scale, cross-cloud data movement—it also powers Pipelines and Dataflow Gen2, making end-to-end integration seamless and reliable. As new connectors and capabilities are added every week, organizations can confidently integrate new sources and destinations, adapt to evolving business needs, and keep their data ecosystem agile and future ready.
With this release, we’re proud to introduce a host of new capabilities to our best-in-class enterprise connectivity platform.
To learn more details about the new connector features, visit Unlocking Seamless Data Integration with the Latest Fabric Data Factory Connector Innovations.
Unleash the Power of Cross-Cloud Data Movement with Best-in-Class Connectivity
This release marks a major milestone for Fabric Data Factory – bringing together petabyte-scale, cross-cloud data movement and best-in-class enterprise connectivity. With innovations like Copy Job, Copy Job Activity in Pipelines, Virtual Network Data Gateway support for Copy, and an ever-expanding connector ecosystem, organizations can now unify fragmented cross-cloud data estates, accelerate with secure integration, and unlock timely insights with confidence.
Ready to experience what’s possible? Head to the Fabric portal and create your first Copy Job to see petabyte-scale data movement in action. Dive deeper with the Fabric Data Factory overview, and explore detailed documentation and tutorials for Copy Job, Pipelines, Dataflows, Data Gateway, and Connectors—everything you need to power your next wave of data integration and innovation.
We look forward to seeing the solutions and breakthroughs you’ll build with these new capabilities. The future of data movement and connectivity starts now—explore, build, and innovate with Fabric Data Factory today!
For more details and community support, explore these resources:
- Sign up for the Fabric free trial.
- View the updated Fabric Roadmap.
- Try the Microsoft Fabric SKU Estimator.
- Visit the Fabric website.
- Join the Fabric community.
- Read other in-depth, technical blogs on the Microsoft Fabric Updates Blog.
