Persistent stitches together diverse datasets with Microsoft Fabric

September 19, 2025

In asset-heavy industries like manufacturing, maintenance, and on-site equipment inspection, fragmented data is a common issue. As employees across different functions feed data into multiple systems, the challenges can multiply. Disparate systems, inconsistent data formats, and siloed business units make it difficult for leaders to see the full picture, potentially leading to inefficient decisions and missed opportunities for revenue growth.

This is the kind of challenge Persistent Systems was made for. As a global Microsoft Solutions Partner across every solution area and a Tier 1 Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner, Persistent uses their deep expertise in data modernization and engineering to break down silos, unify disparate systems, and deliver the kind of real-time insights that drive operational innovation and optimization.

For one of Persistent’s customers—a market leader in industrial tank design, manufacturing, and inspection—that unified data architecture brought together multiple major business verticals. As an organization, they provide their clients with a better way to store their products; in turn, Persistent helped them discover a better way to store and unleash the power of their data.

Better data storage for the energy storers

Persistent had already shown the customer some of what they could do, as the two companies had discussed partnering together a year before. They then met at a workshop, and Persistent shared a proof of concept at a Microsoft hackathon, giving the customer firsthand knowledge of their ability to fuel innovation and efficiency with Microsoft solutions and bridge gaps between systems.

So when the time came to tackle something larger—a unified data architecture to connect all three major business verticals—Persistent was the clear choice to lead the way. By building on the existing trust and technical understanding, the two teams were able to move quickly from discussing pain points to designing a solution that would provide real-time visibility, accurate reporting, and a solid foundation for future growth.

A single source of truth, woven with Fabric

Persistent collaborated with the customer on a unified, end-to-end analytics platform capable of pulling data from every corner of the business and delivering it in readily accessible formats that the team could use to easily derive insights.

“We brought in all this tank data, tank design data, inspection data, and customer data that we had pulled from sales,” said Purushottam Darshankar, Chief Data Architect at Persistent. “Azure Data Lake Storage was supporting all these formats, so we started bringing this data together into OneLake."

Extrapolating from their earlier proof of concept, Persistent built the solution on Microsoft Fabric, an enterprise-ready platform that combines data movement, processing, ingestion, transformation, and real-time intelligence. Fabric’s integrated, lake-centric storage foundation, OneLake, provided a single location for all of the customer’s structured and unstructured data, eliminating the silos and duplication that had previously slowed reporting and analytics.

Using Fabric’s integrated services, Persistent designed a “bronze-silver-gold” data flow strategy:

• Bronze (data ingestion): Pulls data from Salesforce, on-premises databases, and other sources into a central data lakehouse, with incremental loads guided by control tables to capture only what’s changed since the last update.
• Silver (data transformation): Uses PySpark to cleanse and prepare the data—removing duplicates, normalizing formats, applying consistent data types, and separating fact and dimension data with proper dimension modeling.
• Gold (data modeling and visualization): Builds a semantic model with a star schema approach, ensuring efficient queries and relationships, and publishes it to Power BI for interactive reporting.

Next, to make the data truly actionable, Persistent created tailored Power BI dashboards, published to dedicated workspaces for different user groups. They also integrated Fabric with Power Apps and Power Pages, giving the customer secure, role-based access to insights through intuitive portals.

A clearer view today, a smarter path tomorrow

After this consolidation, the customer resumed data flow where bottlenecks had once slowed their ability to make decisions and gather insights. The result was transformative, equipping the customer with:

• Unified data sets pulled from multiple disparate systems, including Salesforce, DIP Data, and Solomon, providing access to all data and insights in one place.
• Streamlined inspection processes and operational workflows by reducing the manual effort previously required to gather accurate information.
• Improved collaboration across teams with a single source of truth.
• Enhanced efficiency through standardized schema modeling, automated validation checks, and report publishing to Power BI workspaces.

Above all, Fabric equips the customer with a platform that can evolve with their future needs. In a fast-changing industry where ready access to evolving data makes a huge difference, Fabric empowers them to hone a competitive edge. With Persistent as a strategic partner, the customer is no longer just collecting data—they’re using it as a true driver of innovation and value.