About Tech4Data

About Tech4Data
Photo by Microsoft Copilot / Unsplash

✍ Writing On my own Time. ⚠️ Personal blog. Everything here is my own

Tech4Data is my personal publication about the Microsoft Data Platform, written for the people who build with it.

I'm Ramesh Nelluri, based in the Netherlands. In my day job, I'm a senior technical leader (Global Black Belt) within Microsoft's enterprise solution engineering organization, acting as a trusted advisor to strategic customers across EMEA on their cloud and data transformation journeys.

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My focus is Azure Analytics specifically Microsoft Fabric, Azure Databricks, and Microsoft Purview with deep work across OneLake, Realtime Intelligence, Ontologies, Data Agents, data lakes, data warehousing, real-time analytics, and data governance.

Day to day, I lead complex cloud engagements, partner with technical and business leaders to shape data architectures and help customers turn data and AI investments into actual business outcomes. I get to see what works, what doesn't, and where the sharp edges are across dozens of real-world scenarios.

I started Tech4Data in May 2025 because most Fabric content sits at two extremes marketing material on one side, 100's of learn docs on the other. This site lives in the middle: practical, hands-on writing distilled from my own experiments, study, and pattern-spotting across what I see in the field (anonymized, generalized, and never specific to any single customer).

What you'll find here

I publish across four pillars:

  • 🏗️ Fabric deep-dives: OneLake, Lakehouse vs Warehouse, Direct Lake, Mirroring, capacity sizing, security, CI/CD.
  • 🧪 Hands-on tutorials: step-by-step builds with code you can clone and run, not screenshots you have to retype.
  • 🧭 Opinions & perspectives: my personal takes on patterns, anti-patterns, and architectural trade-offs, clearly labelled as opinion.
  • 🎓 Learning resources: free roadmaps, certification prep notes (DP-600, DP-700), and curated links so you don't have to dig through 100's of tabs.

Every technical post ship with a diagram, or a GitHub repo or notebook, and a "what I'd skip if I were short on time" section.

Who this is for

  • Data engineers and architects working with or evaluating Microsoft Fabric.
  • Analytics and platform leaders who need to translate Fabric capabilities into architecture decisions and roadmaps.
  • CIOs, CDOs, and CTOs trying to separate signal from noise as the data platform landscape shifts.
  • Power BI and SQL professionals levelling up into the broader Fabric ecosystem.
  • Anyone learning the Microsoft data stack who prefers plain English and working code over abstract diagrams.

If you've ever Googled "why is my Direct Lake fallback hitting Direct Query?" at 11 PM — this site is for you.

Why subscribe

Subscribing is free. Members get:

  • 📬 Weekly newsletter: the post of the week, plus 2–3 links worth your time from across the data ecosystem.
  • 🗂️ Full archive access: including cheat sheets, decision trees, and downloadable PDFs.
  • 💬 Community comments: discuss posts with other practitioners.
  • 🆕 Early access: to new guides and code repos.

No ads. No spam. No paywalls on things that should be free.

My background

  • 🎯 Today: Senior technical leader at Microsoft Azure Analytics specialist (Fabric, Databricks, Purview) advising strategic EMEA customers. (Personal blog and all views are my own.)
  • 🧰 Daily focus areas: Microsoft Fabric, Azure Databricks, Microsoft Purview, OneLake, data lakes & warehousing, real-time analytics, data governance, Power BI, Python, SQL, KQL, Spark.
  • 🤝 What I love about the work: helping customers unlock the full potential of their data and AI investments and solving complex challenges that deliver real business value.
  • 🎤 Community: Public Speaker at various data community across Netherlands, Belgium and parts of Europe also in a personal capacity.

🌍 Location: Netherlands · 🌐 Covering: EMEA.

If you've read this far thank you.

Tech4Data exists because of readers like you. Reply to any newsletter or drop a comment I read everything (in my personal time 🙂).

— Ramesh Nelluri

⚠️ Important:

Tech4Data is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Microsoft or any other Organization. Everything here is written in my personal capacity, on my own time, and reflects only my own views, opinions, and learnings not those of my employer, its customers, or its partners. See the full disclaimer.

Full disclaimer

The opinions, views, ideas, code, examples, and analyses expressed on Tech4Data (tech4data.nl) are entirely my own and do not represent the views, positions, strategies, or opinions of Microsoft Corporation or any of its subsidiaries, customers, or partners.

  • This is a personal blog maintained on my own time and at my own expense.
  • Tech4Data is not an official Microsoft publication, is not endorsed by Microsoft, and is not affiliated with any Microsoft product team.
  • I do not share confidential information, internal communications, customer data, NDA material, or unreleased product details.
  • All product features I write about are generally available or in public preview at the time of writing and may change without notice.
  • For official Microsoft Fabric guidance, see Microsoft Learn and the official Fabric blog.
  • Code samples are provided "as is" with no warranties; test before using in production.
  • This site does not provide official support. For product support, please use Microsoft Support or the Microsoft Fabric Community

Last Updated: 22nd May 2026