What We Learned at FabCon 2025: AI, Governance, RTI, and more.

The Microsoft Fabric Community Conference 2025 brought together over 15,000 data professionals, technologists, and partners worldwide. Hosted in Las Vegas, this year’s event showcased how Microsoft Fabric continues to evolve as a unified platform for analytics, data governance, AI, and real-time intelligence. 

For LevelShift, this event marked a significant milestone. From being recognized as a “Featured Partner” at last year’s FabCon to returning this year as a Platinum Sponsor, the growth has been both rapid and rewarding. 

We co-hosted a technical session with Perforce Delphix to showcase real-world Fabric solutions through live demos and expert walkthroughs. Our customers, SPINX and United AG, joined us as on-floor advocates and co-presenters in a well-received session on data compliance-earning direct recognition from Microsoft leadership.   

The blog highlights the key takeaways in the Fabric arena from our perspective.   

A Community-Driven Momentum: New Fabric Enhancements 

Among the standout updates was the introduction of OneLake Security, a game-changing advancement that centralizes access control across all Fabric engines. Organizations can now define row- and column-level access policies once and enforce them everywhere-from SQL to Power BI. This release introduces folder- and table-level security support, intuitive role creation using standard T-SQL, and an updated UI for managing data access. Integration with Azure Key Vault and AWS KMS ensures secure credential handling across clouds.  

Another major milestone was the expanded integration with Azure AI Foundry, enabling enterprises to build intelligent, data-aware conversational agents. These agents now support access to both structured and unstructured sources-ranging from SQL and KQL databases to SharePoint and Azure AI Search-delivering highly contextual responses across departments. Organizations like NTT Data have already deployed these agents to transform HR analytics and real-time decision-making.  

Copilot’s availability across all paid SKUs democratizes AI access. Teams can utilize Copilot in Fabric Notebooks and Power BI without upgrading capacity tiers. Copilot in Notebooks now offers improved code suggestions, inline visualizations, and natural language understanding-making data exploration faster and more intuitive. Meanwhile, Copilot in Power BI provides immersive conversational experiences where users can ask questions, apply filters, and derive insights without writing DAX.  

 

Microsoft also announced Autoscale Billing for Spark, allowing organizations to run Spark jobs serverless and pay based on usage. This feature decouples compute from core Fabric capacity and supports predefined resource profiles like “writeHeavy” for streaming and ingestion-heavy workloads.  

Real-time mirroring received key upgrades, too-organizations can now mirror Azure SQL, PostgreSQL, and Snowflake data behind firewalls using gateways. The updated experience includes drag-and-drop setup, automatic Delta conversion, schema preservation, and live preview features. Support for vector data, cross-tenant mirroring, and user-assigned managed identities is on the roadmap.  

Updates to Power BI include ad hoc calculations, enhanced data annotations for PowerPoint exports, semantic model versioning, and deeper notebook integration. Users can now run advanced analytics from a single pane, while features like query insights and cache usage analysis help optimize performance.  

Also noteworthy were advancements in Fabric Data Warehouse, including DacFx integration for CI/CD, support for user data functions using Python, and Git-based versioning. Secure data ingestion was simplified through the Copy Job feature-now generally available with real-time monitoring, incremental preview, and support for 20+ source connectors, including Oracle, SAP HANA, GCS, and S3.  

Introducing Fabric CLI and GA of the Terraform Provider makes DevOps and infrastructure-as-code adoption far more practical. With improvements in Microsoft Purview-like DLP policy expansion to lakehouses and mirrored databases-Microsoft Fabric is maturing as an enterprise-grade, developer-friendly, AI-enabled data platform. 

From Featured Partner to Platinum Sponsor: Our Value to the Fabric Ecosystem 

At the heart of LevelShift’ participation was a powerful technical session titled Best Practices to Speed Up AI Data Privacy Compliance in Fabric.   

The session addressed the growing need to secure sensitive data during fabric adoptions and AI initiatives. Speakers Kumar Vellore (LevelShift), Jayson Dowswell (Spinx), and Steve Karam (Perforce Delphix) outlined strategies to:  

• Automatically detect and irreversibly mask sensitive data to prevent re-identification.  
• Seamlessly integrate masking into ETL workflows for performance at a petabyte scale.  
• Preserve the realism of masked data to ensure high-quality AI and analytics outputs.  

The session emphasized how enterprises can maintain compliance while accelerating innovation, providing practical approaches for real-time analytics and secure, compliant data migration. The insights resonated strongly with attendees, earning recognition from Microsoft and culminating in an invitation for LevelShift and Spinx to participate in an official video testimonial.

We remain the only global provider currently offering end-to-end data compliance as a service within the Microsoft Fabric ecosystem. This includes masking, audit logging, and role-based access configuration tailored for enterprise data governance.

As a Platinum Sponsor, we showcased our Fabric expertise in a collaborative booth with Perforce/Delphix. Visitors explored live demos of Copilot applications, participated in an AI Maturity Assessment, and experienced interactive visualizations powered by Fabric and Microsoft Teams. A custom-designed space featuring a demo zone, Zen lounge, and interactive holograms served as a meeting point for innovation and conversation.

What Comes Next: Is Fabric on your 2025 roadmap?

Microsoft Fabric continues to gain traction, with over 21,000 organizations onboard and counting. As the platform scales, the need for implementation partners who can navigate complexity, align with business outcomes, and deliver at speed becomes more critical.  

 

As a trusted Microsoft Fabric consulting company, LevelShift helps organizations navigate this transformation through tailored strategies and hands-on implementations—from advisory and architecture to implementation and Copilot-led transformation. Recognized as a Featured partner two times in a row in 2024 and 2025, building solutions that leverage the latest Fabric features and solve real-world data challenges.   

We understand that every organization’s Fabric journey is different. Whether it’s exploring Fabric adoption, optimizing your data strategy, or implementing enterprise-grade AI with Microsoft Copilot, we are committed to being your trusted partner for modern data solutions. Our expertise and dedication to delivering maximum ROI and minimal downtime, from the initial PoCs to post-implementation support, give you the confidence that you’re in good hands.  

Join hands with us to make the most of Microsoft Fabric — Let’s talk 1:1