Democratizing Business Insights with an AI-ready Data Mesh on Microsoft Fabric

Client

Enabling the Future of Banking Technology

Our client provides cloud-native and cloud-agnostic banking platforms for financial institutions worldwide, spanning core banking, digital banking, payments, and wealth management. With customers operating across on-premises, cloud, and SaaS environments, the company needed a modern data foundation that could scale globally, support AI-driven innovation, and deliver trusted insights across business functions.

Challenges

Building Business Agility Through Connected Data

Over the years, the enterprise’s data estate evolved into a complex ecosystem of disconnected tools, legacy systems, and siloed reporting environments. At the center of the landscape was a legacy Oracle-based data warehouse surrounded by fragmented domain-level solutions that operated independently across teams.

As the enterprise expanded across business domains, different teams began maintaining their own reporting logic, KPIs, and datasets, often generating inconsistent outputs for the same metrics and reducing confidence in enterprise reporting. The absence of a single source of truth was evident.

Data ownership also remained unclear, while governance practices evolved in silos without standardized controls, lineage visibility, or centralized cataloging. As a result, users struggled to trust the accuracy and consistency of enterprise insights.

At the same time, the legacy environment was not designed to support AI-ready data and modern analytics initiatives, forcing teams to rely on manual processes, duplicated engineering efforts, and complex ETL dependencies across enterprise domains.

The lack of reusable governed data products further increased operational overhead, as teams frequently recreated datasets and reports independently.

The vision was clear: build a cloud-native data mesh for a data platform ready for AI.

Solution

Building an AI-ready Data Mesh on Microsoft Fabric

Hexaware partnered with the client to design and implement a modern enterprise data platform powered by a data mesh on Microsoft Fabric. The engagement focused on transforming fragmented data operations into a scalable, governed, and domain-driven ecosystem that could support enterprise-wide analytics and future AI initiatives.

Hexaware Established a Business-Led Data Strategy

The transformation began with a focused discovery and implementation phase to assess the client’s current data landscape, reporting dependencies, governance gaps, and modernization priorities.

Hexaware worked closely with business and technology stakeholders to define:

• A scalable data mesh operating model
• Federated governance standards
• Domain ownership structures
• Enterprise-wide data policies
• A phased modernization roadmap through 2026

To demonstrate measurable business value early in the journey, a Customer 360 domain was selected as the first enterprise data product.

Our Pilot: Customer 360 Data Product

Our implementation was to deliver a reusable customer 360 data product with curated datasets, shortcuts, semantic models, governed views, and Power BI dashboards aligned to critical business KPIs.

How We Implemented the Data Mesh with Microsoft Fabric

Hexaware implemented a mesh-native architecture using Microsoft Fabric and OneLake to decentralize ownership while maintaining platform-backed governance and interoperability across domains.

Created Domain-Owned Data Products

Dedicated domain workspaces were created within Microsoft Fabric, enabling business domains to independently manage and publish trusted data products while following enterprise-wide governance standards.

Used Medallion Architecture for Trusted Data

A scalable Medallion architecture implementation was introduced using Bronze, Silver, and Gold layers to streamline ingestion, transformation, and business-ready consumption of enterprise data.

This structured approach improved data quality validation, consistency, and reusability across business domains.

Modernized Pipelines and Fabric-Compatible Engineering

Legacy ETL and PLSQL workloads were re-engineered into Microsoft Fabric-compatible pipelines and notebooks to support cloud-native scalability and operational efficiency.

Federated Governance by Design

Hexaware implemented strong data governance capabilities through:

• Enterprise-aligned data policies
• Cataloging and lineage tracking
• Role-based and policy-driven access controls
• Clear ownership and stewardship models
• Federated data contracts across domains

This allowed the organization to scale data democratization without compromising compliance or security.

Benefits

Scalable Insights with a Governed Data Mesh

The modern data platform empowers business domains with trusted, reusable data products while maintaining strong governance controls.

40% Faster Access to Trusted Customer Insights

With unified and trusted Customer 360 views, teams can access consistent information without relying on fragmented reporting systems or manual reconciliation processes.

30% Reduction in Duplicated Data Effort Through a Data Mesh and Fabric Shortcuts

Reusable, domain-driven data products reduced redundant engineering and reporting efforts across teams. Additionally, the data mesh operating model facilitated standardized data sharing and reusable semantic models, improving operational efficiency.

3x More Scalable AI-Ready Data Foundation

The modern Microsoft Fabric architecture established a scalable platform capable of supporting future AI, analytics, and enterprise intelligence initiatives.

Stronger Data Governance, Compliance, and Democratization

Standardized lineage, cataloging, policy-driven access, and federated governance improved trust, transparency, and compliance while enabling governed data democratization across the enterprise data ecosystem.

Summary

Creating a Future-Ready Enterprise Data Ecosystem

Our client successfully transformed a fragmented and legacy-heavy data environment into a modern enterprise cloud-native data platform powered by a data mesh on Microsoft Fabric.

Today, it operates with domain-owned, governed, and reusable data products that improve agility, accelerate analytics, and support enterprise-wide data democratization.

The customer data platform implementation has already established a strong foundation for scalable analytics and AI-ready data operations. Building on this success, the client is now expanding the initiative to develop an end-to-end sales data platform that delivers trusted sales insights and enables faster self-service analytics across the enterprise.

The enterprise is also progressing toward broader adoption of Microsoft IQ capabilities, including Fabric IQ, Work IQ, and Foundry IQ, to further enhance intelligent operations.

Explore how Microsoft Fabric can accelerate governed analytics, reusable data products, and enterprise AI adoption. Dive deeper with our whitepaper: Microsoft Fabric for AI Readiness with a Data Mesh Strategy.