As a growing insurance company, Baloise has built a diverse data landscape over the years that has increasingly reached its limits. Making data from different systems and sources centrally available posed growing challenges for the company and required manual processes to make it usable for business departments and decision-making. At the same time, business requirements were increasing faster insights, greater self-service capabilities, and the ability to use data as a strategic foundation for decisions and future AI scenarios.
Against this backdrop, Baloise decided to build a modern, integrated data platform based on Microsoft Fabric, working with ALTYCA as the lead implementation partner and in close collaboration with Microsoft.
Following a structured evaluation, Microsoft Fabric was selected as the technological foundation. ALTYCA was responsible for the target architecture design, the technical implementation, and the coordination between business, IT and technology partners throughout the transformation process. The objective was to establish a unified, scalable, and future-ready data platform for both operational and strategic use cases.
As Martin Ursprung, Partner & Relations at ALTYCA, explains, “Our ambition was not only to introduce a new technology, but to take end-to-end responsibility as the implementation partner and, together with Baloise, build a solution that works in daily operations and delivers sustainable value.”
With Microsoft Fabric and OneLake, the existing data landscape was consolidated and significantly simplified. Data from multiple sources is now integrated centrally and made available for reporting, analytics and advanced use cases, serving as a consistent data foundation across business units.
The architecture is based on Microsoft Fabric and integrates data from on-premises and cloud sources. Data is connected via gateways and shortcuts, while ingestion and orchestration are handled through Data Factory and metadata-driven pipelines, ensuring a standardized and transparent integration framework.
Data processing follows a medallion architecture with Bronze, Silver and Gold layers. Raw data is ingested, refined, and transformed into business-ready data models. For modeling, ALTYCA uses the Data Build Tool (dbt), enabling version-controlled and maintainable structures. In the Gold layer, a central data warehouse based on a star schema provides the foundation for semantic models and reporting.
The architecture is complemented by Azure DevOps for CI/CD, Azure Key Vault for secrets management, and a structured workspace and security concept, ensuring scalability, governance and future readiness.
Claudio Mirti, Sr. Solution Engineer, Data & AI EMEA at Microsoft, notes, “Microsoft Fabric brings together data engineering, analytics and BI on a single platform, thereby creating the foundation for integrated data solutions and AI scenarios.”
The platform delivers tangible business value. It enables faster time-to-insight, reduces manual effort, and strengthens self-service capabilities for business users, while establishing a consistent foundation for future Data & AI initiatives.
Marius Vogel, Head of Group Data & BI Services at Helvetia, highlights the impact: “The collaboration with ALTYCA and Microsoft was straightforward, technically strong and on equal footing. We were able to significantly simplify our data platform while at the same time laying the foundation for future requirements.”
With this platform in place, Baloise has established a scalable data foundation that supports both current needs and future Data & AI development, turning data into a strategic asset across the organization.