With the rise of Microsoft Fabric as a next-generation data platform, many organizations that currently rely on Azure Synapse Analytics are wondering how the two platforms compare and what the future holds. Are they competing products? Is Synapse being phased out? And if you're already invested in Synapse, can you migrate to Fabric?
The short answers: they're built differently, Synapse is here to stay (for now), and some migration paths do exist. Let’s explore what that means in practice.
A Tale of Two Platforms
At a high level, both Microsoft Fabric and Azure Synapse aim to solve the same fundamental challenge: helping organizations turn raw data into actionable insights. But the way they go about it is fundamentally different.
Azure Synapse Analytics is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution. It provides modular components like dedicated SQL pools, Spark pools, Synapse pipelines, and Data Explorer that give you fine-grained control over data workflows. With Synapse, you can architect a solution to meet specific performance, scale, and security requirements. But with that flexibility comes complexity. You need to manage provisioning, integration, and scaling across different services.
In contrast, Microsoft Fabric represents a software-as-a-service (SaaS) approach. Instead of piecing together tools, Fabric brings everything together - data ingestion, engineering, warehousing, real-time analytics, and business intelligence into a single, unified platform. It includes technologies you may recognize from Synapse, Power BI, and Azure Data Factory, but reimagined under a cohesive experience with shared governance, compute, and storage through Microsoft OneLake, the OneDrive for data.
With Fabric, there’s no need to spin up separate compute resources or manage integrations. Everything is pre-wired, accessible through a common UI, and secured through Microsoft 365. It’s a simpler experience with broader reach, designed to serve data engineers, analysts, and business users in one environment.
So, Is Microsoft Replacing Synapse?
Not at all (at least not officially).
Microsoft has not announced any plans to retire Synapse. In fact, Fabric and Synapse are currently positioned to coexist. Synapse remains a fully supported and actively maintained product within the Azure ecosystem. It's still a great choice for organizations that need full control over infrastructure, region-specific deployment, or hybrid integrations.
That said, Fabric represents the future direction of Microsoft’s data platform strategy particularly for customers who want a more integrated and cloud-native experience. Fabric is where Microsoft is concentrating its innovation, especially around AI-powered analytics, seamless collaboration, and no-code-to-pro-code unification.
So, while Synapse isn’t going anywhere for now, Fabric is clearly the next-generation platform and Microsoft is building pathways for organizations to start exploring it.
Migrating from Synapse to Fabric: What’s Possible?
If you're already using Synapse, you might be wondering if (and how) you can move parts of your existing environment into Fabric. Microsoft has created documentation and tooling to help with this transition especially for data engineering workloads that rely on Spark and pipelines.
According to Microsoft’s migration overview, you can currently migrate:
This isn’t a simple lift-and-shift it's a modernization opportunity. While Fabric reuses much of the underlying technology (like Spark and Delta Lake), it introduces a new workspace structure, tenant model, and governance framework. That means migrating to Fabric may involve rethinking how teams collaborate, deploy, and scale their analytics work.
It’s also important to note that not all Synapse features have Fabric equivalents (yet). However, the platform is evolving quickly, and Microsoft has indicated that more features and migration support are coming.
Choosing the Right Path Forward
Ultimately, whether you stay with Synapse, move to Fabric, or use both depends on your organization's goals:
Fabric doesn’t force a switch it offers a bridge.
Final Thoughts
Microsoft Fabric and Azure Synapse share a common goal but serve different architectural needs. Synapse gives you control and modularity. Fabric gives you simplicity and unification. Both are powerful, and both are here, for now.
If your team is ready to explore a more integrated, collaborative data experience, Fabric is worth the investment. And if you're already using Synapse, you won't lose that work, you’ll simply have new options to build on top of it.