Colonnade Insurance: Secure Migration to Microsoft Fabric
More than 400 Power BI workspaces moved to Fabric F64 in a single technical cutover day — with zero downtime, a 10-workspace pilot, and a proactive monitoring model for Azure SQL and SQL Server.
Colonnade Insurance had developed an analytics environment on Power BI Premium that supported critical reporting and over 400 workspaces. With the Power BI Premium P SKU licensing model being phased out, the organization needed to migrate to Microsoft Fabric without interrupting reports, data refreshes, or access for business users and partners — and with a clearer path for cost control, capacity management, and Data & AI.
The Challenge
The key challenges came from scale and operational importance. The migration had to be carried out without disrupting end users, impacting ongoing data refreshes, or compromising reporting stability. At the same time, Colonnade wanted greater cost predictability, improved control over resource consumption, and an architecture capable of supporting the future expansion of analytics, monitoring, and Data & AI use cases.
A second key area was data observability. Colonnade relied on Azure SQL Database and SQL Server instances running on virtual machines to support business applications, portals, and reporting processes. The customer’s team wanted to detect resource exhaustion earlier, identify performance issues before they affected end users, and reduce reliance on reactive incident and alert management.
A Fabric migration of this size is not a licensing swap. Reporting has to stay up, refreshes have to keep running, and the data layer that feeds applications and portals has to become observable — not only after an incident.
Scope of the Project
The project was delivered as a transition from Power BI Premium Capacity to Microsoft Fabric Capacity, leveraging APN Promise’s expertise in analytics platform migrations and the Microsoft Azure Innovate program.
Assessment, Landing Zone, and pilot
Work started with assessing Power BI compatibility with Microsoft Fabric and preparing the target F64 capacity. Every workspace was analyzed — identifiers, owners, capacity assignments, and dependencies — before APN Promise designed the Landing Zone and configured the destination environment.
A pilot migration of 10 selected workspaces, including Power BI reports, data refreshes, and permissions, reduced the risk of the full switch. Only then did the estate move at scale.
Full migration, automated in a single day
More than 400 workspaces were migrated to Microsoft Fabric. Fabric Notebooks, Semantic Link, Apache Spark, and PySpark automated and accelerated the technical migration so that the cutover itself was reduced to a single day. Afterward, reports, data refreshes, and permissions were validated, and the Colonnade team received post-implementation support plus recommendations for the continued evolution of the platform.
Proactive Data Platform Monitoring
A separate workstream focused on SQL database monitoring. APN Promise analyzed requirements for both Azure SQL Database and SQL Server running on virtual machines: CPU, memory, IOPS, and disk throughput; availability and failover; and oversight of nightly data-loading operations. The objective was a proactive alerting approach capable of identifying issues before they impact infrastructure, business applications, or end users.
Recommendations included Azure Monitor, VM Insights, Data Collection Rules, Diagnostic Settings, Log Analytics Workspace, and KQL queries to build alerts, dashboards, and broader observability. The team also evaluated aggregating logs and metrics from both Azure SQL Database and SQL Server on virtual machines into Log Analytics, and using Metric Alert Rules and Log Search Alert Rules to detect threshold breaches, identify anomalies, and reduce false-positive alerts.
Third-party monitoring platforms were considered as potential alternatives. Native Azure monitoring capabilities were recommended as the preferred first-choice solution — the shortest path to alerts, dashboards, and end-to-end observability on the platform Colonnade already runs.
Results
The migration was completed in a secure and controlled manner, ensuring uninterrupted operation of the reporting environment. The project also enabled Colonnade to take advantage of Microsoft’s transition period related to Fabric Capacity adoption and the retirement of Power BI Premium, helping optimize the overall cost of transformation.
| Outcome | What changed |
|---|---|
| Workspace migration | More than 400 workspaces successfully migrated to Microsoft Fabric |
| Technical cutover | Reduced to a single day through Notebooks, Semantic Link, Spark, and PySpark |
| Continuity | Zero downtime for users and ongoing data-loading processes |
| Capacity | Fabric F64, equivalent to the previous Power BI Premium P1 tier |
| Risk reduction | Pilot of 10 workspaces completed before the full rollout |
| Cost control | Stronger foundation for cost planning and capacity-based resource management |
| Observability | Recommended monitoring architecture for Azure SQL Database and SQL Server on VMs |
- A platform for the continued expansion of internal analytics, external reporting, and Data & AI initiatives.
- A proactive alerting model for faster detection of resource saturation, availability issues, disk bottlenecks, memory pressure, CPU constraints, and failover-related events.
- Monitoring expanded beyond the reporting layer to the critical data layer that underpins applications, customer portals, and reporting processes.
Customer Perspective
The greatest value of working with APN Promise was the combination of a deep understanding of our environment and a safe, structured approach to migration. The project was completed without disruption to users or critical reporting processes, while also providing practical recommendations that help us continue to evolve our data platform, better control costs, and respond more quickly to potential performance issues.
Dariusz Durka, Application Manager, Colonnade Insurance
Long-Term Value
Colonnade gained a modern, scalable, and future-ready analytics platform built on Microsoft Fabric. The migration was not merely a licensing change or a technical transfer of workspaces. It was a strategic step toward a more controlled, predictable, and growth-oriented data environment.
The new architecture enables the organization to streamline reporting, separate internal and external analytics scenarios, monitor performance more effectively, and scale the platform in line with the growth of users and business processes — without compromising stability, and with greater control over operational costs.
Extending the project to SQL Server and Azure SQL Database monitoring further strengthened the entire data ecosystem. Colonnade gained a clear roadmap from reactive incident response to proactive identification of bottlenecks, anomalies, and performance issues. That matters in an environment where customer portals, business applications, data-loading processes, and reporting services are closely interconnected, and delays in one layer can affect the end-user experience.
Space for the next initiatives
- Further enhancement of database monitoring capabilities.
- Expansion of Power BI Embedded solutions.
- Optimization of observability and monitoring processes.
- Ongoing cost assessment and optimization, and continued adoption of Microsoft Fabric for advanced analytics and Data & AI workloads.
About Colonnade Insurance S.A.
Colonnade Insurance S.A. is an international insurance company specializing in property and casualty (non-life) insurance and is part of the Fairfax Group. The company is incorporated in Luxembourg and was established to support Fairfax’s insurance operations across Central and Eastern Europe.
Colonnade operates through branches in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, as well as through a subsidiary in Ukraine. The organization employs more than 500 professionals and provides insurance solutions for both individual and corporate customers.
If your organization is retiring Power BI Premium P SKUs and needs a secure, structured path to Microsoft Fabric — with zero-downtime cutover and monitoring that reaches the data layer — talk to APN Promise about assessment, migration, and proactive alerting.
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