Designing a Microsoft Fabric Data Lake for an Industrial Chemicals Organization

Background

Client
Industrial Solutions Business Unit (Chemicals) – Newly Carved-Out Organization

Engagement Type
Enterprise Data Platform Strategy, Architecture, and Governance

Business Need

Following a corporate carve-out, the Industrial Solutions organization needed to rapidly establish a modern data platform that would enable end-user self-service access to organization-wide data. The solution needed to support a broad range of users including business analysts, engineers, and data scientists while laying a scalable foundation for future analytics and reporting.

Challenge

The client faced a familiar but complex set of challenges common to large data initiatives:

• Selecting the right enterprise data platform amid evolving requirements
• Addressing legacy data quality issues across multiple source systems
• Supporting both structured and unstructured data
• Existing data governance processes that did not meet current or future needs
• Aggressive timelines driven by the corporate carve-out and related business milestones

Solution

Osprey led the Solution Work Track, providing end-to-end ownership of the data platform strategy. This included:

• Technical evaluation and platform recommendations
• Definition of a practical and scalable data governance model
• Development of a detailed, phased program roadmap

All recommendations were packaged into executive-ready materials, enabling the project sponsor to confidently present the approach and secure leadership approval.

The approved solution was built on three foundational cornerstones:

1. Implementing the right technology platform
2. Establishing strong, cross-organizational data governance
3. Creating an achievable, actionable roadmap that accounted for technology timelines, data remediation, governance maturity, and corporate dependencies

Technology Selection

The team selected Microsoft Fabric as the enterprise data platform to:

• Centralize all organizational data
• Enable governance and data quality controls
• Support data engineering and data science workloads
• Empower self-service analytics for business users

Fabric’s ability to support complex data management use cases while serving a wide range of internal and external data consumers was a key decision factor. Equally important, the platform reduced implementation risk and architectural complexity.

Data Governance Approach

Osprey emphasized that data governance is as critical as the technology itself. Early focus areas included:

• Establishing enterprise-wide Bronze (Raw), Silver, and Gold data classifications
• Defining processes to correctly classify and onboard data
• Designing a governance operating model to improve data quality, stewardship, and accountability

Results

• An 18–24-month data program was approved and is currently in progress
• Osprey continues to lead the data architecture function
• The team is supporting phased Microsoft Fabric implementation and assisting with project team staffing
• Data workshops are underway; early sessions produced key lessons learned that enabled a repeatable workshop model
• Both business and technical teams gained first-hand understanding of the value of strong governance and the risks of weak governance