ECE Group modernizes real estate data management with streamlined cloud analytics
ECE Group, one of Germany's leading real estate companies managing around 200 shopping centers in 12 countries, was challenged by an aging, on-premises data warehouse that led to slow, costly data processing across more than 40 source systems. Facing increasing data volumes, extended processing times, and rising operational costs, ECE elected to modernize its data platform in partnership with adesso SE and Microsoft Cloud architects. The company migrated five major business data blocks—in phases—from on-premises and hybrid environments to a Microsoft Fabric-based data warehouse in the cloud, integrating Azure Data Factory for comprehensive data ingest and harmonization. The migration leveraged Azure OpenAI Service to automate and accelerate the transformation of legacy code for the new environment, reducing manual labor by half and minimizing errors. By adopting a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) approach with Microsoft Fabric, ECE gained consolidated reporting, automated code migration, and high-performance AI analytics. This modernization resulted in substantial time and cost savings, freeing IT resources for strategic work while enabling real-time insights for different business teams, such as marketing and operations. Investor and tenant reporting, business planning, and shopping center management are now powered by unified, harmonized data delivered at much greater speed and scale. Use cases span supply chain, marketing visitor analytics, and facility management, with Fabric’s platform supporting further AI innovation and Copilot integration. The entire transformation was carried out in a way that was invisible to end users, ensuring stable operations throughout the transition. Performance reliability at peak processing times and the SaaS pricing model offer further business value, with future plans to expand to real-time analytics on advertising and visitor flows.
- Organization
- ECE Group
- Industry
- Real Estate
- Location
- Germany
Reported outcomes
−50%
quantified impactAutomation & deflection
Strategic outcomes
Catalog median for automation & deflection deployments: −50% across 44 reported metrics. Compare benchmarks →
Primary read
Use case focus
Showing 3 of 5
- 1Cloud-native data warehouse modernization for real estate portfolio
- 2Automated code migration for legacy analytics using AI
- 3Centralized, cross-team reporting and analytics platform
- Outdated, on-premises data warehouse with mounting hardware and maintenance costs.
- Extensive manual effort needed to process and migrate large code and data volumes.
- Increased data load from 40+ systems slowed calculations from 3–4 hours to over 8 hours.
- Difficulty integrating new data sources and technologies (AI, real-time analytics).
- Fragmented data slowed business reporting and operational decisions.
- Phased migration of five key data business blocks to Microsoft Fabric cloud data warehouse.
- Adoption of Azure Data Factory for centralized and automated data ingest.
- Use of Azure OpenAI Service to automate and translate legacy code for Fabric, halving migration labor.
- SaaS approach shifted focus from infrastructure operation to core business and analytics.
- Partnership with adesso SE and Microsoft Cloud solution architects for architecture and implementation.
- Migration projects shortened by 300–400 days compared to manual processes.
- Manual workload reduced by up to 50% through Azure OpenAI code automation.
- Significant reduction in operating and infrastructure costs.
- Faster, more reliable reporting and analytics—50-page investor reports generated from cloud data.
- Improved capacity for innovation and agility in business teams.
Architecture
Azure Data Factory collects and delivers raw data from over 40 source systems into Microsoft Fabric, where data is processed, harmonized, and normalized. Azure OpenAI Service is used to translate and optimize legacy code, automating migration tasks with a custom web portal. All reporting, planning, and analytics workloads are run on the Fabric warehousing layer as SaaS, enabling integration with other Microsoft and AI services.
Implementation partners1
Sources & evidence1
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