What Fabric is
Microsoft Fabric is a unified SaaS analytics platform launched in 2023 and matured through 2024–2026. It bundles seven workloads — Power BI, Data Factory, Data Engineering (Spark), Data Warehouse, Real-Time Intelligence, Data Science (ML), and Data Activator — on a shared OneLake storage layer. The pitch is one product to buy, one place to land data, one billing model.
Fabric vs Synapse vs Power BI Premium
Synapse Analytics is Fabric's predecessor for big-data warehousing and Spark workloads — Microsoft is steering customers towards Fabric for new builds. Power BI Premium capacity has effectively been replaced by Fabric capacity (F-SKU); existing Power BI Premium tenants get migration paths but new purchases route through Fabric. For Australian organisations new to the analytics platform decision, Fabric is the default starting point.
Pricing in AUD
Fabric is sold by capacity SKU (F2, F4, F8, F16, F32, F64, F128, F256, F512, F1024, F2048). F2 starts at roughly AUD $400/month and capacity scales linearly. F64 and above include Power BI Pro per-user free for everyone in the organisation, which is often the trigger for moving to Fabric instead of staying on standalone Power BI Pro.