Architecture
Microsoft Cloud for Retail provides a reference architecture for Retail data solutions. The reference architecture provides an overview of common and recommended implementation technology choices, terminology, technology principles, common configuration environments, and composition of applicable services. It details how retailers can take advantage of the available list of connectors, application templates, and business intelligence capabilities for various retail scenarios.
Download a printable PDF of this reference architecture diagram.
The key stages/dataflow are as follows:
Data sources
Retailers aim to integrate data from their diverse operational systems into retail data solutions to gain valuable insights and actions. This integration can be achieved through a combination of Microsoft and partner connectors from Microsoft Cloud for Retail, and Fabric out-of-the-box (OOB) connectors.
The Sitecore OrderCloud data connector can be used to bring commerce data from Sitecore OrderCloud (preview) into Microsoft Fabric in real time. The connector with Sitecore OrderCloud gives a quick and reliable platform to get commerce data for three important areas: product, customer, and orders. The connector streamlines the process of transforming and orchestrating data from Sitecore OrderCloud. It maps this data to the retail industry data model, and helps in minimizing engineering workload and hastening the generation of insights. For more information, see Overview of Sitecore OrderCloud data connector.
Customer tenant in Microsoft Fabric
Microsoft Fabric represents an end-to-end, integrated analytics platform that consolidates a comprehensive suite of data and analytics tools essential for organizations to harness the full potential of their data.
Data ingestion - Exchange and transform
Retailers have the capability to pull data from various sources into Fabric using either Microsoft Fabric Eventstream or Lakehouse. These data ingestion methods serve as the foundation for conducting advanced analytics or real-time analytics.
Microsoft Fabric Eventstream feature in Microsoft Fabric gives a centralized place in the Fabric platform to capture, transform, and route real-time events to various destinations with a no-code experience.
Real-time events convert data and store it in the designated Fabric Lakehouse tables. Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse is a data architecture platform for storing, managing, and analyzing structured and unstructured data in a single location.
Microsoft Industry Data Models (IDMs) enables data product interoperability. IDMs help retailers organize the way their data is shaped and shared and ensure that it meets industry-wide standards. It provides a shared data language for business and analytical applications to use.
Retail data estate
Data serves as the bedrock for retailers, enabling them to derive valuable insights, take informed actions, and harness the power of cutting-edge language models and copilot experiences. The Industry Data Model provides a standardized and harmonized schema for managing retail-related data.
Retail Data Model is a blueprint used by retailers to plan, architect, and design data solutions for data governance, reporting, business intelligence, and advance analytics. This key capability of the Retail data solutions in Azure Synapse allows retailers to use the full or subset of the data model to meet their specific needs. For more information, see Overview of Retail industry data model.
Microsoft OneLake is built into the Fabric service and provides a unified location to store all organizational data where the experiences operate. OneLake is built on top of Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) Gen2 and can support any type of file, structured or unstructured. All Fabric data items like data warehouses and lakehouses store their data automatically in OneLake.
Fabric Data warehouse workloads benefit from the rich capabilities of the SQL engine with open data format. It allows customers to focus on data preparation, analysis, and reporting with a single copy of data stored in Microsoft OneLake.
Analytics and AI
After data is ingested to the Retail industry data model, retailers can use a range of AI/ML models and perform analytics. By utilizing both Microsoft and partner capabilities, retailers can obtain top-tier solutions tailored to their business requirements.
Dynamics 365 Commerce Analytics enables organizations to make informed data-driven decisions about business with rich insights from transactional and behavioral e-commerce data.
Frequently bought together AI model empowers the store or the merchandising manager to make data-driven decisions on products’ placement and promotions, based on insights on closely related products. For more information, see Overview of Frequently bought together model.
Interactive visualizations
Frequently bought together model Power BI report provides a rich set of information and insights on its user interface (UI).
Dynamics 365 Commerce reports can help retailers generate and view several reports in Commerce to see how your online channel is performing.
Microsoft Fabric Copilot
Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Fabric bring new ways to transform and analyze data, generate insights, and create visualizations and reports in Microsoft Fabric and Power BI.
For more information, see Retail data solutions architecture | Documentation.