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.