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November 15, 2023

Optical solutions pioneer ZEISS Group uses Microsoft Fabric to advance innovation with data analytics

ZEISS Group knew it could put its “mountains” of disparate data to better use. But the company needed a way to break free of its ever-increasing number of data silos so it could work from a single source of truth across all its data analytics workflows. With targeted technical goals including evolving its enterprise (Big) DATA Analytics platform (eVA, based on the Data Mesh principles) establishing end-to-end data lifecycle acceleration, and supporting business growth through AI innovation, ZEISS Group chose Microsoft Fabric on the Azure platform as its solution. With Fabric, ZEISS Group can connect and combine all its data sources without creating redundant data silos and without the need to invest in additional infrastructure. ZEISS Group feels eVA, supported by Microsoft Fabric on Azure, will provide the architecture and governance it needs for a secure and trusted data supply chain that can be shared effortlessly across a range of business units—allowing the company to focus on creating industry-leading optical solutions.

ZEISS Group

“Data sharing is key, and eVA, supported by Fabric on Azure, could provide the foundation for a trusted analytics solution that we can easily share across our business units.”

Markus Morgner, Head of Enterprise Data Platform & Engineering, ZEISS Group

Challenging the limits of imagination has been the mission of ZEISS Group since 1846. As a pioneer of innovative optical solutions for industries including automotive, mechanical engineering, biomedical research, and medical technology, the Germany-based company is committed to creating products that inspire people around the world to see in new ways.

“Our focus is on helping millions of people see clearer and better. Our innovations help people avoid car collisions through optics integrated into automotive parts, we build optical solutions and mirrors for semiconductor segments, lenses for medical devices, and more. Our products and digital services inspire imagination and innovation in our customers,” says Markus Morgner, Head of Enterprise Data Platform & Engineering at ZEISS Group.

With technology and customer needs rapidly evolving, ZEISS Group felt it needed a modern analytics solution to support its efforts to continuously scale innovation for its advanced products and digital offerings. The company wanted to streamline its analytics workflows to provide internal business units with frictionless access to information that would support more intelligent, customer-centric decisions. To accomplish this, ZEISS Group needed to share information across teams while maintaining a more secure, role-based environment. 

“We are sitting on mountains of data accumulated over the last 177 years. It’s trusted, it’s governed, it’s secured, it’s well-managed, but there's a lot of value that gets left behind,” says Morgner. “With Fabric, there was the promise to do more with our data—turn it into insights, turn insights into actions, and do so in a secured environment. And we knew a Fabric solution would eliminate data siloes and apply analytics with precision to aid specific use cases.”

Connecting and combining data sets across an enterprise

In its evaluation of solutions, ZEISS Group knew it wanted to increase its use of AI while meeting very specific technical objectives. These goals included evolving its enterprise (Big) DATA Analytics platform (eVA), accelerating its end-to-end data lifecycle, and supporting business growth through AI and analytics. “eVA represents the Data Mesh platform that our D&A Data Platform and Engineering team, in collaboration with our strategic partner Microsoft, has developed. Our objective is to ingest a significant amount of the relevant ZEISS data—including structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data—into the platform. This enables stakeholders to gain actionable insights that are smarter, faster, trusted, and to transform data into business value,” says Daniel Gruner, Head of Business Data Enablement, ZEISS Group.

ZEISS Group has a long-standing relationship with Microsoft and has been using Microsoft technologies including Microsoft 365, Power BI, and Azure Synapse Analytics to connect and analyze datasets. Given the pre-existing familiarity with Azure analytics, ZEISS Group joined the private preview of Microsoft Fabric unified analytics platform that empowers AI and integrates products like Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, Data Activator, Power BI, and Azure Data Lake Storage into a unified service. “Previewing Fabric was a great opportunity to explore its features and to plan how we could adopt it into our organization,” says Morgner. “We soon realized it was the natural evolution for our Data Mesh journey as it provided a complete analytics service in a single offering.” 

Microsoft Fabric was also a clear choice to support the next iteration of eVA. “eVA 4.0 will provide a mix of data management capabilities including the ability to seamlessly explore our entire data estate,” says Gruner. With Microsoft Fabric, ZEISS Group can connect and combine all its line of business data, regardless of format, without duplicating data and without the need to maintain additional infrastructure. “The Microsoft Fabric service works seamlessly with Microsoft Purview and brings together a complete analytics suite that allows us to easily manage our workloads,” adds Gruner. 

Empowering imagination, pushing the boundaries of innovation

While still in the midst of evolving eVA and scaling its use of Microsoft Fabric, Morgner says, “The transformative capabilities of Fabric are easy for us to see; especially for our very large and complex data transformations.” 

Morgner adds “Data sharing is key, and eVA, supported by Fabric on Azure, could provide the infrastructure for a trusted analytics solution that we can easily share across our business units.” 

While still early in its journey, ZEISS teams are already reporting easier access to data and increased collaboration across the organization. Morgner says that Fabric gives the company the ability to facilitate use-case driven analytics which will reduce the time to create new data products and offerings that are highly relevant to customer needs. “Microsoft Fabric helps fuel our company’s collective imagination,” says Gruner. “It will allow us to be smarter and insight-driven when creating and enhancing our data products, while also increasing the speed with which we can bring these offerings to our stakeholders. In addition, Fabric can enable business growth by also providing self-service analytics capabilities.”

Gruner adds that ZEISS Group greatly values working with Microsoft. “Microsoft brings a similar heritage of excellence as ZEISS—some of the industry’s best talent, skills, and an innovative mindset similar to ours. It is a natural fit. Microsoft understands our company’s culture and is a valued asset to our mission. We know that with the support of Microsoft and its focus on AI, we can continue to push the boundaries of what is possible,” says Gruner.

Find out more about ZEISS Group on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

“Previewing Fabric was a great opportunity to explore features right at the beginning and to think about how we could adopt them in our organization. We soon realized it was the natural evolution for us in our data mesh journey as it provided a complete analytics service in a single offering.”

Markus Morgner, Head of Enterprise Data Platform & Engineering, ZEISS Group

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