What belongs in a strategic improvement plan review, and what doesn't
What belongs in a strategic improvement plan review, what to cut, and six questions that turn a status readout into decisions leadership can act on.
Database guides from the people who run them
Guides on the decisions that actually reach a database team: what a licensing renewal is really asking, when a warehouse has to be replaced rather than tuned, and what has to be true before an AI initiative is worth funding.
Fortified Data Blog Posts
SSIS to Fabric Data Factory migration: what moves and when
Planning an SSIS to Fabric Data Factory migration? See what the preview runs today, what it cannot, and which packages to keep, move, or rebuild.
Why database consulting fails before code changes
Most database consulting engagements fail during discovery, not in the code. Here is how to close the diagnosis gap before a line of code gets written.
“Extension of your team” in managed database services
Every managed database vendor claims to be an extension of your team. Here is how to test that claim in the SOW, from response tiers to 2 a.m. calls.
What is the cost of a single point of failure DBA?
The cost of a single point of failure DBA never shows up on a budget line. A CFO's framing for DBA staffing risk: coverage, replacement, and downtime.
SQL Server 2016 end of support: the free ESUs are gone
SQL Server 2016 support ended July 15, 2026, and free ESUs are gone. What ESUs cost, what they cover, and how to compare upgrade and migration options.
Why “nothing broke this month” is the wrong way to measure your database partner
A quiet month is a good month, but it isn’t the finish line. Learn how to measure a managed database services provider beyond uptime, with six questions and KPIs that show whether your environment is actually improving.
Database cost optimization: where it actually pays off
Seven questions a finance or IT leader can ask about database spend, covering licensing, cloud capacity, reactive operations, FinOps and build versus buy.
How to vet a managed database services provider in 2026
Six questions to vet a managed database services provider, from who delivers the work and after-hours coverage to whether your estate improves over time.
Purview data governance and Fabric’s new guardrails
Microsoft announced a batch of new Purview capabilities for Fabric at FabCon Atlanta earlier this year, and the framing was blunt: AI adoption is increasing data exposure risk, and the new controls exist to let organizations scale AI initiatives without scaling that risk alongside it. If you’re running a Fabric workspace, or planning one, this matters for how you think about Purview data governance from here forward. I’ve spent more than a decade in the BI trenches, and most recently inside Purview’s catalog and the Microsoft data stack around it. People often ask me about this on calls: “Microsoft added governance guardrails” and “our organization is now governed” are two different claims. Only the first one is true the day these features ship.
PostgreSQL vs Oracle: when the license cost stops making sense
The renewal notice arrives every year and the Oracle license cost is always higher, though the workload never changed. Standardizing on PostgreSQL is less a technology preference than a finance decision with an engineering path attached. Here is what that path involves and where it stalls.
Microsoft Fabric data platform vs. legacy data warehouses
What a legacy data warehouse really costs, what the Microsoft Fabric data platform offers, and how to decide whether and when to modernize.
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