iLink Digital, an AI-led transformation services company, took part in FabCon Europe 2026 in Barcelona. The European Microsoft Fabric + SQL Community Conference ran from 28 September to 1 October.
Through customer talks and technical sessions, the team tackled one challenge. How can enterprises build on their existing data and analytics investments to make AI more reliable, context-aware and useful in daily decisions?
Sree Balaji, Co-founder and Group CEO of iLink Digital, said customers kept coming back to one answer. Dependable AI needs business context. He said AI is only as useful as the data, definitions and governance behind it. That is where iLink and Microsoft Fabric meet, he added, and the company was proud to share that work in Barcelona alongside customers such as Marvell.
From Report-Ready to AI-Ready
A recurring theme was that capable AI models alone are not enough. Enterprise AI also needs trusted business context. That means clear definitions, governed data, relationships, and knowledge captured in semantic models and planning processes.
Microsoft’s announcements on Fabric IQ, ontology, Copilot, Planning and applications in Power BI reinforced this link between enterprise data and AI. These foundations help AI systems interpret what data means, rather than simply retrieve it.
Fabric IQ was central to the conversation. It is designed to give AI agents a deeper understanding of enterprise context, so they can support better-informed decisions and actions. For enterprises, the task is to strengthen existing data environments so AI can work with business context, proper controls and greater reliability.
Sessions on Applying Business Context to AI
In From Foundry to Forecast, Sowjanya Bobbadi and Subbu Muthukrishnan showed how an agent can turn a business question into a forecast update in Microsoft Fabric. Existing governance and approvals stayed in place. The session linked business context, planning processes and AI agents within established workflows.
Christopher Schmidt, VP of Solution Engineering & Innovation at iLink Digital, led a session titled “Do You Trust Your AI Systems? Moving from Power BI to Trusted AI Answers”. He explained what makes a semantic model AI-ready. He also covered how a governed Fabric and OneLake foundation supports trusted AI reasoning, and how Fabric IQ helps AI grasp business meaning rather than just schema. The session also looked at changes organisations may need to make to their Fabric environments before deploying AI agents in business workflows.
Srikanth Thiagarajan, Head of Data Office at Marvell Technology, joined iLink on stage for From Data to Context to Decisions: Marvell’s Journey Toward an Enterprise Knowledge Layer. The talk showed how governed enterprise data, a shared knowledge layer and business context help people and AI agents make informed decisions.
Microsoft Fabric Developments Shaping the Conversation
The announcements pointed to a broader shift. Governed business context is moving closer to Copilot. Applications are becoming easier to build from trusted data. Fabric is also extending across planning, data engineering, ontology and operations.
Fabric IQ in Copilot Chat and Cowork is now generally available, bringing governed business context into Copilot. Apps in Power BI entered preview. They let users create applications from trusted semantic models using natural language. Planner on Fabric IQ was presented as a way to tackle siloed planning.
Agentic ontology creation lets teams build an ontology from semantic models and OneLake data. Users can express business rules in plain English and carry Power BI measures across.
A data engineering agent and Migration Assistant, both in preview, support platform migrations and lakehouse modernisation. Teradata has been added to the Migration Assistant preview. IQ sharing, also in preview, lets organisations share governed data and agent instructions with partners and customers.
Fabric observability, in preview, strengthens visibility and control across data and AI workloads. Root-cause analysis in operations agents is generally available.
Wider platform updates covered OneLake integrations and Database Hub in Fabric. SQL Server on Azure Local is now generally available, and Microsoft Fabric has expanded to GCC High.
Together, these updates show why AI models, trusted data, business rules and governed workflows must be assessed as one. That matters for any organisation moving from AI experiments to dependable business use.
Turning Enterprise Knowledge into Practical Outcomes
In customer and community talks, iLink discussed Microsoft Fabric priorities, implementation challenges, data estate modernisation and AI in business workflows. The team also welcomed Arun Ulag to its booth. He joined iLink leadership to discuss the evolving Microsoft Fabric ecosystem.
The conversations reinforced iLink’s focus on connecting data foundations, business context and AI engineering around the decisions organisations want to improve. They also underlined the need to assess AI readiness, strengthen semantic models and governance, and align Fabric capabilities with business priorities.
Sakthi Kannan, Chief Growth Officer at iLink Digital, said many organisations in Barcelona want to build on their existing data and analytics investments. Their question now is how to get AI answers they can trust. He said iLink is helping them assess readiness, strengthen their semantic and governance foundations, and apply Fabric capabilities to the priorities that matter most, working closely with Microsoft.
