Future-Proofing Supply Chains through Fabric Migration
Cloudaeon helped a European supplier cut costs, unify supply chain data and deliver real-time insights by migrating from legacy Snowflake to Microsoft Fabric.
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Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged.
For any supply chain operations, fast and accurate data is of utmost importance. One of the European suppliers was having a hard time managing their supply chain effectively. The main reason being, legacy Snowflake data platform. The legacy system was not only escalating costs but also generated fragmented insights.
Decision-makers found themselves reacting to issues rather than anticipating them.
Soon they realised the core challenge was the existing data infrastructure could no longer support the speed and scale required for modern, global supply chain management.
Challenges
The clients legacy Snowflake data platform threw a series of complex hurdles that limited operational agility and strategic decision-making.
Escalating costs: The legacy Snowflake data platform relied on expensive commercial Change Data Capture (CDC) connectors and a high-cost licensing model. These expenses consumed a significant portion of the budget without a good return on investment.
Fragmented data and slow insights: For seamless supply chain operations, a holistic view of data was required. However, due to siloed regional and operational systems. This fragmentation of systems led to slow reporting cycles which meant it took days for critical insights.
Technical and operational limitations: Legacy Snowflake platform lacked the inherent flexibility required for a global analytics solution. The dependency on an outsourced IT team for reporting created a bottleneck that limited the access to data they needed.
Solutions
Cloudaeon implemented a two-phased solution designed to address both the immediate cost challenge and the long-term need for a unified and scalable data platform.
Custom-built CDC framework: To reduce the increasing costs, commercial CDC connectors were replaced with a custom-built, in-house framework. This significantly reduced the integration costs and offered full control over their data pipelines thereby enhancing security and customisation.
Migration to Microsoft Fabric: The savings generated from the custom CDC solution were strategically reinvested into migrating the entire data ecosystem to Microsoft Fabric.
This consolidated all supply chain data into a unified Lakehouse using OneLake which eliminated data silos and created a single source of truth.
Empowering business users with Power BI and Copilot: By integrating Power BI, data pipelines were streamlined to deliver near real-time insights.
The addition of Copilot for Power BI was a game-changer that allowed supply chain planners to query data and generate reports using natural language. This drastically reducing their reliance on IT thereby accelerating the time-to-insight.
Impact
Cost reduction: The initial investment in the new platform was fully funded by the savings from replacing the commercial connectors. This resulted in a sustainable reduction in the total cost of ownership (TCO) and freed up budget for future data initiatives.
Operational efficiency: Reporting cycles came down from days to minutes. Decision making was quick and in real time.
Strategic advantage: By unifying data in OneLake, the business gained a single and trusted view of its entire global supply chain.
Conclusion
By first tackling the problem of escalating costs and then strategically reinvesting those savings, Cloudaeon enabled the client to achieve a complete data revolution.
Migration to Microsoft Fabric not only solved the immediate issues of slow reporting and fragmented data but also established a future-ready foundation for AI and advanced analytics. This transformation demonstrates how a strategic data platform choice can turn operational challenges into opportunities for long-term strategic growth.
Struggling with rising costs and fragmented insights? Contact us today to explore how Microsoft Fabric can transform your data platform.
