Since 1846, it has been the mission of the ZEISS Group to challenge the limits of imagination.
As a pioneer of innovative optical solutions for industries such as automotive, mechanical engineering, biomedical research, and medical technology, the Germany-based company aims to develop products that inspire people around the world to see the world with new eyes.
"Our focus is on helping millions of people achieve clearer and better vision. Our innovations help prevent car accidents through optical systems integrated into vehicle parts. We develop optical solutions and mirrors for the semiconductor industry, lenses for medical devices, and much more. Our products and digital services foster the imagination and innovative strength of our customers"
– Markus Morgner, Head of Enterprise Data Platform & Engineering
How can the data of the last 177 years be utilized?
With the rapid technological advancement and changing customer needs, the ZEISS Group felt compelled to implement a modern analytics solution to scale the continuous innovative capability of their advanced products and digital offerings. The goal was to simplify the analysis workflows to ensure that internal business areas have a smooth access to information that enables smarter and customer-centric decisions. For this, ZEISS needed to be able to share information across teams – all within a secure, role-based environment.
“We are sitting on mountains of data that have accumulated over the last 177 years. They are trustworthy, regulated, secure, and well-managed – yet a large part of their value remains untapped. With Fabric, we had the prospect of getting more out of our data – turning it into insights and deriving concrete actions from them – all within a secure environment. We realized: A Fabric solution would dissolve data silos and apply analytics specifically to certain use cases.”
– Markus Morgner, Head of Enterprise Data Platform & Engineering
Connecting and combining data across the enterprise
When evaluating potential solutions, the ZEISS Group was clear that it wanted to expand its use of AI – while also pursuing very specific technical objectives. These included the further development of the company-wide (Big) Data Analytics platform eVA, accelerating the entire data lifecycle, as well as supporting business growth through AI and analytics.
“eVA stands for the Data Mesh platform that our D&A Data Platform and Engineering Team has developed together with our strategic partner Microsoft. Our goal is to integrate a significant portion of the data relevant to ZEISS – structured, semi-structured, and unstructured – into the platform. This way, our stakeholders can gain smarter, faster, and more reliable insights and turn data into real business value,” says Daniel Gruner, Head of Business Data Enablement at the ZEISS Group.
The ZEISS Group has a long-standing partnership with Microsoft and is already utilizing technologies such as Microsoft 365, Power BI, and Azure Synapse Analytics to connect and analyze data sources. Due to this existing experience with Azure Analytics solutions, ZEISS participated in the private preview of Microsoft Fabric – the new, unified analytics platform that enables AI and brings together products like Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, Data Activator, Power BI, and Azure Data Lake Storage in a single service. “The Fabric preview was a great opportunity to test the functionalities and plan how we could integrate them into our business,” says Markus Morgner. “It quickly became clear to us that Fabric is the logical evolution on our Data Mesh journey – it offers a complete analytics service in a single package.” Microsoft Fabric quickly became the ideal choice for the next development stage of eVA. “eVA 4.0 will provide a wide range of data management capabilities – including the ability to seamlessly explore our entire data inventory,” explains Gruner.
With Microsoft Fabric, the ZEISS Group can connect and combine all business data – regardless of format – without duplicating data and without needing to maintain additional infrastructure. “The Microsoft Fabric service works seamlessly with Microsoft Purview and comes with a complete analytics suite that significantly eases the management of our workloads,” adds Gruner.
Better Analytics, More Speed
Powerful Data Integration without Data Copies
Different data types can be linked and combined without redundancies.
Complete Governance
Fabric works seamlessly with Microsoft Purview, enabling reliable data management.
Centrally Accessible & Collaboration
Teams gain easier access to data and can collaboratively develop use cases.
Path to the Future: AI-driven Data Products
Although the project is still in full swing, Markus Morgner notes that the transformative effect of Fabric is already visible – especially in complex data transformations:
“Fabric enables us to produce data-driven analyses that deliver new data products faster – exactly where our customers need them.”
– Daniel Gruner, Head of Business Data Enablement
Gruner adds: Fabric promotes both self-service analytics and scalable business growth through new data-based offerings.