PERI accelerates time-to-insight with Microsoft Fabric

PERI was operating a traditional SAP BW on HANA landscape that struggled to meet growing demands for real-time analytics, advanced AI capabilities, and cost-efficient scalability.

PERI, together with b.telligent, chose a modern analytics solution built on Microsoft Fabric, leveraging OneLake as a single, unified data lake for all enterprise data and complemented by Azure Databricks for scalable data engineering.

PERI gained a unified, cloud-native analytics platform with improved agility and scalability, enabling self-service analytics via Power BI and reducing time-to-insight in key use cases from 3–4 days to one day for faster decision-making.

For more than 55 years, PERI has stood for technological excellence, innovation, and close customer relationships. As one of the world’s leading manufacturers and suppliers of formwork and scaffolding systems, and a pioneer in 3D concrete printing, the company operates globally in more than 70 countries. This international growth significantly increased the requirements for data availability, transparency, and speed in analytical reporting.

The existing analytics landscape based on SAP BW on HANA increasingly struggled to meet these demands. The on-premises architecture was maintenance-intensive, only partially scalable, and made it difficult to implement modern analytics and AI scenarios. At the same time, business units required faster access to data, self-service analytics capabilities, and a future-proof platform to support data-driven innovation.

PERI therefore decided to fundamentally modernize its analytics architecture with the goal of creating a unified data foundation, significantly reducing time to insight, and paving the way for advanced analytics and AI.

“By successfully implementing Microsoft Fabric together with Azure Databricks, we enabled unified data engineering and reporting through Power BI. The platform also opened new opportunities for data science and real-time intelligence use cases, driving faster insights and smarter decision-making.”

Mathias Prähofer, Head of Data Partners, PERI

Modernizing analytics architecture with b.telligent and Microsoft

Together with b.telligent, PERI developed a modern, cloud-based analytics architecture built on Microsoft Fabric and Azure Databricks. At the core of the initiative was the migration of the existing SAP BW on HANA system to a scalable Lakehouse architecture. b.telligent designed a Lakehouse-first architecture that combines powerful data engineering with user-friendly analytics:

Central Data Foundation With OneLake – All relevant enterprise data is centrally stored in Microsoft Fabric OneLake using open formats. This creates a unified data foundation that can be used by different analytics and engineering workloads without redundant data copies.

Medallion Architecture for Structured Data Processing – Data processing follows the proven Medallion principle (Bronze, Silver, Gold). Azure Databricks handles scalable data integration and transformation, while curated Gold data models are provided for analytical use cases. This transition had a massive impact on efficiency: Previously, data pipelines often consisted of more than five sequential steps. With the new architecture, PERI streamlined these processes to just one or two stages from data source to report, simplifying error analysis significantly.

Self-Service Analytics With Power BI – Thanks to the tight integration of Power BI into Microsoft Fabric, business units can directly access curated data. Using Direct Lake, users benefit from high performance and near real-time analytics while maintaining clear governance.

Professional Implementation and Operations – To ensure a sustainable and reproducible solution, b.telligent implemented modern engineering standards such as CI/CD with Azure DevOps and Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.
b.telligent supported PERI end to end — from architecture and migration strategy through technical implementation to the enablement of internal teams.

Transformative outcomes with Microsoft Fabric

By deploying Microsoft Fabric with OneLake and Lakehouse architecture alongside Databricks, PERI achieved a unified, cloud-native analytics platform that significantly improved agility and scalability. Instead of theoretical gains, the team sees measurable acceleration: For established use cases, PERI reduced the time-to-insight for new reporting solutions from previously three to four days to just one single day, as underlying data is now curated and available in OneLake. The solution also enables advanced AI and machine learning capabilities, supporting real-time decision-making in use cases like value based discounting for the sales force or rental material planning scenarios for demand planners in the PERI´s worldwide yard network

“We overcame the limits of SAP BW on HANA and implemented a scalable Lakehouse architecture using Microsoft Fabric and Azure Databricks. Power BI with Direct Lake delivers rapid insights, while CI/CD and IaC aligned with b.telligent standards ensure long-term sustainability. The collaboration was truly partnership-driven and highly focused.”

Matthias Nohl, Strategic Partner Manager, b.telligent

What’s next

Reflecting on the outcome, Mathias Prähofer, Head of Data Partners at PERI SE, says “By successfully implementing Microsoft Fabric together with Azure Databricks, we enabled unified data engineering and reporting through Power BI. The platform also opened new opportunities for data science and real-time intelligence use cases, driving faster insights and smarter decision-making.”

From b.telligent’s perspective, Matthias Nohl, Strategic Partner Manager, adds “We overcame the limits of SAP BW on HANA and implemented a scalable Lakehouse architecture using Microsoft Fabric and Azure Databricks. Power BI with Direct Lake delivers rapid insights, while CI/CD and IaC aligned with b.telligent standards ensure long-term sustainability. The collaboration was truly partnership-driven and highly focused.”

Discover more about PERI on LinkedIn and b.telligent on LinkedIn and X/Twitter.