Pharma manufacturer builds a compliant hybrid data lake on Azure for next-generation analytics

Where the pressure started.

Batch records, lab results, ERP transactions and sales data each lived in a separate system. Legacy ETL jobs were slow, poorly documented and hard to validate. Quality and regulatory teams rebuilt reports by hand in spreadsheets, and tracing a number back to its source took days. Any new platform had to meet data integrity expectations, access control and full audit trails.

Designed for the real operating environment.

• Designed a layered lake on Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2: raw, validated and curated zones, with Azure Synapse Analytics as the enterprise reporting layer.
• Rebuilt legacy ETL as modular, version-controlled pipelines on Azure Data Factory and Azure Databricks with data quality checks at every stage.
• Kept on-premises manufacturing systems in place and built a hybrid link over Azure ExpressRoute, since some workloads cannot leave the plant.
• Catalogued datasets with business definitions, ownership and end-to-end lineage in Microsoft Purview.
• Applied role-based access, encryption and audit logging across the platform, aligned to the client's data integrity SOPs.
• Connected Microsoft Power BI for business reporting and set up an Azure Machine Learning workspace for data science teams on the same governed data.