Avanade equips 10,000 employees with Microsoft Fabric skills to help customers become AI-driven and future-ready

Digital innovation company Avanade—a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft—works with organizations around the globe to reimagine the future, positioning its customers for success in today’s AI-driven market.

“We’re helping our clientele reinvent their businesses with generative AI,” says Sailaja Bhagavatula, Advanced Technology Centers Global Lead for Avanade. “The first step is to help them create a strong data foundation for AI solutions and other advanced technologies.” To make this possible, Avanade needed to upskill its own employees at scale with hands-on training in data migration and advanced data analytics platforms.

Empowering business intelligence

Avanade relies on sophisticated analytics drawn from a complex data estate unified with Microsoft Fabric. The software-as-a-service solution includes Microsoft OneLake to break down data silos, Microsoft Copilot to support developer innovation, and Copilot in Microsoft Power BI to make data available across the organization. This comprehensive analytics foundation streamlines all data and analytics workflows, from data integration and engineering to data science, empowering employees to deliver extraordinary services to customers. It also helps them guide customers toward more effective management of their own data estates to yield business intelligence for innovation.

“We expect many customers will move to Fabric,” says Bhagavatula. “With a strong data foundation, it becomes easier to adopt AI. So how do we upskill our talent and help scale adoption for customers?” To solve this need, Avanade created a Fabric Center of Excellence—known as Fabric University—a training resource that helps employees bring enhanced data analytics into their work.

Upskilling at Fabric University

Fabric University caters to a range of skill sets, from business users to IT professionals. Avanade began by thoroughly researching Fabric capabilities and scalable talent creation strategies. The company then developed role-based, persona-based training including hands-on experience in a controlled environment within non-production tenants. Fabric University includes tools for governance, security, and monitoring to manage adoption and rollout. Participants get continuous follow-up and support.

Fabric University is a compelling example for other organizations on the importance of a centralized training resource hub. It streamlines learning and provides links to both internal and external resources for comprehensive certification support—leading to strong certification rates.

Only months after implementation, more than 10,000 Avanade employees were using Fabric and 600 of those had earned Fabric certification. Thaivasilai Thangasamy, part of the Avanade Technology Group at Accenture, says, “Our goal is to roll out to another 20,000 people in the next year so every employee understands Fabric and can work expertly with data and analytics.”

Employees can now create and share dashboards, demos, and sandboxes while protecting data integrity and confidentiality. “With Microsoft Fabric, employees can quickly build different dashboards using natural language and Copilot in Power BI,” says Suman Sundar, Advanced Technology Centers global lead for Data, AI, and Gen AI Lead at Avanade. “Their day-to-day jobs have been completely transformed.”

Fostering proficiency

With their new skills gained from Fabric University, Avanade employees can create demos to help customers quickly grasp the scope and depth of the strategic insights that Fabric can deliver—with support from Avanade—for their own organizations.

Avanade is using Fabric and other Microsoft solutions to develop new AI tools and accelerators, both for internal and customer use. “Our focus has always been, how we can stretch the boundaries of newer technologies to come up with different solutions for our customers’ challenges,” says Bhagavatula. “Businesses come to Avanade because they see we’re using Microsoft technologies, such as Fabric, in the most effective ways possible.”

With Fabric and Fabric University, Avanade ensures employees and customers have the skills they need to begin creating intelligent futures today.