Article
Navigating your Microsoft Fabric migration: Scenarios and strategies
May 20, 2025 · Authored by Dave DuVarney, Chris Wagner
Migrating to the Microsoft Fabric platform offers a transformative opportunity for your organization to optimize data management and leverage advanced capabilities. Depending on your current technology infrastructure, your migration journey will fall into one of two primary scenarios. Understanding these scenarios is crucial for determining the best approach for your migration strategy to achieve a seamless transition.
Whether your organization is opting for a straightforward lift and shift or a more comprehensive evaluate, design and build migration strategy – the key to a successful Microsoft Fabric migration lies in careful planning and a thorough understanding of your current data environment.
Migration scenarios
Depending on your organization’s current technology infrastructure, one of two migration scenarios will be taken when implementing Microsoft Fabric: (1) cloud-to-cloud migration or (2) on-premises to cloud migration.
- Cloud-to-cloud migration: This scenario involves moving data and processes from one cloud environment to Fabric. This would be done by an organization that is already using a different cloud platform, such as Databricks or Snowflake, or is already leveraging Azure, but looking to move to Fabrice for improved efficiency and capabilities.
- On-premises to cloud migration: This scenario involves transitioning from on-premises data storage and processing to a cloud-based solution. This would be done by an organization with on-premises infrastructure looking to move to the cloud using Fabric.
Understanding these two scenarios can help your organization determine the best approach for your migration strategy, whether it involves a straightforward lift and shift or a more comprehensive evaluate, design and build approach.
Migration approaches
Regardless of whether your organization is partaking in a cloud-to-cloud or on-premises to cloud migration, there are two main migration approaches you can choose from: (1) lift and shift approach or (2) evaluate, design and build approach.
Lift and shift approach
This approach involves moving your existing data landscape and processes into Fabric while making minimal changes. We recommend this approach for organizations with significant existing codebases or limited budget for development, QA testing and minimal business resources.
Justification:
- Significant existing codebases: If your platform has a substantial amount of existing code, rewriting or re-architecting it can be time-consuming and costly. This approach allows you to preserve your current investments in code and processes, ensuring continuity and reducing the risk of disruptions.
- Limited budget: When budget constraints are a concern, this approach minimizes the need for additional financial resources. By avoiding extensive re-architecting and rebuilding, you can achieve migration with lower initial costs, making it a cost-effective solution.
- Development and QA testing: Extensive changes to the data landscape often require rigorous development and QA testing to ensure stability and performance. With this approach, the need for such testing is reduced, as existing processes are maintained with minimal alterations.
- Minimal business resources: If your organization has limited business resources to dedicate to the migration project, this approach simplifies the process as it allows users to continue using familiar tools and processes, reducing the need for extensive training and adaptation.
Overall, the lift and shift approach is ideal for scenarios where the priority is to migrate quickly without extensive modifications, leveraging existing investments and minimizing disruptions. While it may not fully optimize the capabilities of Fabric, it provides a practical and cost-effective solution for immediate migration needs.
Evaluation, design and build approach
This approach involves a thorough assessment of the current state, designing an optimal future state and planning the development sequence. We recommend this approach for organizations aiming to achieve long-term benefits and fully leverage the advanced capabilities of Fabric.
Justification:
- Enhanced functionality: This approach provides an opportunity to thoroughly assess the current state of your data landscape and design an optimal future state. By redesigning and optimizing data architecture and processes, you can achieve better performance and efficiency, ensuring that your systems are robust and scalable.
- Long-term cost savings: Although the initial investment may be higher, this approach can lead to significant long-term cost savings. By eliminating unnecessary components and improving resource utilization, you can reduce ongoing operational costs and enhance the overall efficiency of your data management processes.
- Future-proofing: This approach prepares your organization to take full advantage of Fabric’s advanced features, including AI capabilities. By designing future-proof architecture, you ensure that your systems are ready to integrate new technologies and adapt to evolving business needs.
- Complexity and time: While this approach is more complex and time-consuming to implement compared to the lift and shift approach, the thorough assessment and planning involved ensure that the final solution is well-aligned with your business objectives and technical requirements.
- Higher initial cost: The higher initial investment in terms of time and resources for assessment and redesign is justified by the long-term benefits. This approach allows for a comprehensive understanding of your current state and the development of a tailored solution that maximizes the potential of Fabric.
- Change management: Transitioning to new processes and tools may require significant change management efforts. However, this investment in change management ensures that users are well-prepared and supported throughout the transition, leading to higher adoption rates and smoother implementation.
Overall, the evaluation, design, and build approach is ideal for organizations seeking to optimize their data architecture and processes, achieve long-term cost savings and future-proof their systems. While it requires a higher initial investment and more complex implementation, the long-term benefits make it a valuable strategy for achieving sustainable growth and efficiency.
These two migration approaches allow your organization to choose based on the specific needs, resources and goals of your organization. But making the correct decision can be difficult without first assessing your current data environment.
Fabric migration assessment
Assessing your current data environment will provide your organization with a comprehensive understanding of how your data is stored and utilized along with any current processes in place for handling it. This assessment will help your organization determine the best approach to use when migrating to the Microsoft Fabric platform, focusing on six key areas:
- Technical: Evaluate your current data architecture and identify areas for improvement. How well do your integrations, model structures, performance and scalability meet current needs?
- Security: Review data security and compliance with relevant regulations. How is user authentication and authorization managed? What measures are in place to ensure data privacy and protection?
- Licensing and cost: Compare licensing model changes to make informed decisions while effectively managing costs. What are the cost implications and how can you optimize costs?
- Governance: Assess data ownership and data quality to ensure data governance practices are robust and aligned with organizational goals. Do you have any current data governance roles and responsibilities? What lineage and auditing processes are in place?
- User training and enablement: Identify any existing skills gaps within your workforce to ensure users are well-equipped to use the new platform. Do you plan to provide any learning pathways? How will you measure and ensure the adoption of new tools and processes?
- Change management: Determine your organizational readiness to ensure a smooth transition to the new platform. Are stakeholders aligned with the migration plan? What training is needed to support the transition?
By first assessing these six key areas, your organization can make an informed decision on the best migration approach to fit your needs and ensure a successful transition.
This law firm was seeking assistance to design an overarching enterprise data strategy and to implement a unified data model on a modern cloud platform to deliver up-to-date actionable intelligence. Learn how a data strategy assessment provided the organization with a road map to address high priority items while establishing a foundation for the evolution of their data management within the Microsoft Fabric platform.
How we can help
Whether you’re migrating to Microsoft Fabric from an alternative cloud platform or on-premises infrastructure, Baker Tilly’s digital solutions team can support the start of your migration journey with an end-to-end assessment of your current data environment. As a Fabric Featured Partner, leverage our in-depth technical knowledge and expertise to support a smooth transition into the Fabric platform.
Start your assessment today and embark on a seamless journey to Microsoft Fabric, unlocking new efficiencies and capabilities for your organization. Interested in learning more? Contact one of our professionals today.