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Understanding Microsoft Fabric’s Capabilities

  • Woven Lyrical
  • Sep 2
  • 3 min read

Microsoft Fabric is a unified data and analytics platform that simplifies the journey from raw information to decision-ready insights. For any organisation, whether delivering frontline services, raising funds, or managing complex operations, Fabric provides a single, secure, and predictable environment to connect, transform, and use data. 


Core Capabilities of Microsoft Fabric 

A Single Foundation: OneLake 

At the heart of Fabric is OneLake, often described as the “OneDrive for data.” It provides a single, central data lake that all Fabric workloads connect to. This means everyone in your organisation works from the same copy of data, removing duplication, confusion, and versioning issues. 



Seven Integrated Workloads 

Fabric combines seven powerful workloads into one platform: 

  • Data Factory – no/low-code pipelines for ingesting and preparing data. 

  • Data Engineering – powerful notebooks and tools for shaping and transforming data. 

  • Data Science – machine learning and advanced modelling capabilities. 

  • Data Warehouse – scalable, high-performance querying and storage. 

  • Real-Time Analytics – tools for analysing streaming and event data. 

  • Power BI – familiar dashboards and reporting for everyday users. 

  • Data Activator – real-time monitoring and trigger actions when conditions are met. 


By running all workloads over OneLake, Fabric ensures consistency and removes the friction of moving between disconnected systems. 


Seamless Microsoft 365 Integration 

Fabric is built within the Microsoft ecosystem. This means dashboards can be shared in Teams, datasets explored in Excel, and collaboration happens through familiar tools your staff already use. It lowers the barrier to adoption and helps build a culture of data use across the organisation. 


Security and Governance Built In 

Fabric provides enterprise-grade security with role-based access, auditing, and compliance controls. For organisations handling sensitive data—be that client records, donor information, or service outcomes—this reduces risk and builds trust with stakeholders. 


SaaS Delivery Model 

Because Fabric is delivered as a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, there is no infrastructure to patch or maintain. Organisations can focus on using data rather than managing servers or stitching together multiple tools. 


Predictable, Scalable Costs 

Fabric uses a capacity-based model (similar to Power BI Premium). This means you can choose the right tier for your size and scale up or down as needed. For budgeting, this provides predictability and avoids bill shock. 


A Microsoft Fabric capacity resides on a tenant. Each capacity that sits under a specific tenant is a distinct pool of resources allocated to Microsoft Fabric. The size of the capacity determines the amount of computation power available. 

Your capacity allows you to: 

  • Use all the Microsoft Fabric features licensed by capacity 

  • Create Microsoft Fabric items and connect to other Microsoft Fabric items 

  • Save your items to a workspace and share them with a user that has an appropriate license 


Capacities are split into Stock Keeping Units (SKUs). Each SKU provides a set of Fabric resources for your organisation. Your organisation can have as many capacities as needed. 

SKU* 

Capacity Units (CU) 

Power BI SKU 

Power BI v-cores 

F2 

2 

- 

0.25 

F4 

4 

- 

0.5 

F8 

8 

EM/A1 

1 

F16 

16 

EM2/A2 

2 

F32 

32 

EM3/A3 

4 

F64 

64 

P1/A4 

8 

Trial 

64 

- 

8 

F128 

128 

P2/A5 

16 

F256 

256 

P3/A6 

32 

F512 

512 

P4/A7 

64 

F1024 

1024 

P5/A8 

128 

F2048 

2048 

- 

256 


How Fabric Compares to Other Platforms 

  • AWS: Highly flexible and powerful, but complex and requires significant technical expertise. 

  • Snowflake: Excellent at data storage and querying but usually requires other tools for pipelines, governance, or reporting. 

  • Databricks: Very strong for data science and advanced analytics but has a steep learning curve and is often more suited to engineering-heavy teams. 

  • Fabric: Combines ingestion, transformation, storage, governance, real-time analytics, and reporting in one SaaS product. Its integration with Microsoft 365 makes it especially accessible for a broad user base, not just IT or data specialists. 


Woven’s Role 

Woven Data Projects helps you implement Fabric with a focus on organisational context. We ensure the technology is aligned with your strategy, build data literacy across your teams, and establish governance practices that meet funder and compliance needs. Whether you start with analytics-as-a-service or a full Fabric rollout, we help you unlock the platform’s potential in a way that is sustainable and people-centred. 

 

 
 
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