Strategic data platform advisory for Microsoft Fabric and Azure.
Aurora Data helps organisations move from fragmented legacy analytics toward modern lakehouse architectures built for advanced analytics, AI and real-time decision intelligence.
- Experience
- 30+ years
- Based in
- Brisbane, Australia
- Sectors
- Government and private
The practice
Senior architecture help, without the overhead of a large consultancy.
Aurora Data is a specialist practice. Engagements are led personally by Geoff Black, which means the person advising your executive is the person reviewing your architecture.
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Platform advisory and enterprise architecture
Independent architectural direction for data platforms across the Microsoft Fabric and Azure ecosystems, from target-state design through to the decisions that make it hold together in production.
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Legacy modernisation
A path out of fragmented legacy analytics estates and toward lakehouse architectures that can carry advanced analytics, AI and real-time workloads without being rebuilt again in three years.
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Technical authority
Deep review and direction across Fabric design, performance optimisation and governance, for organisations that need a senior voice able to make a call and defend it.
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Capability uplift and mentoring
Targeted engagements that leave your team more capable than they were: architecture workshops, hands-on mentoring, and the structured instruction of a Microsoft Certified Trainer of 30 years.
The arc
Most engagements are a move along the same line.
- 01
Fragmented legacy
Siloed warehouses, hand-built extracts and report sprawl. Every question costs a week and no two answers agree.
- 02
Governed lakehouse
One platform on Fabric or Azure, layered and governed, where data is modelled once and trusted everywhere it is used.
- 03
AI-ready foundation
A semantic layer, lineage and operating model solid enough to carry advanced analytics, AI and real-time decision intelligence.
Capability
Where the work concentrates.
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Enterprise data platform architecture
Target-state design, platform selection, and the architectural decisions that outlive the project.
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Microsoft Fabric, Azure and Databricks
Working knowledge of where each fits, where each strains, and what that means for your estate.
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Lakehouse and modern analytics platforms
Layered design, ingestion patterns and semantic modelling that survive contact with real workloads.
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Data governance and operating models
Ownership, lineage and the day-two operating model that keeps a platform trustworthy after go-live.
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AI-ready data foundations
The groundwork that decides whether AI initiatives have something solid to stand on.
Named for the aurora borealis. The pattern was always in the data; the work is making it visible, early enough to act on.
Case study
An election does not move.
- Client
- Electoral Commission of Queensland
- Engagement
- 2024 State General Election
- Role
- Architecture and delivery lead
- Platform
- Microsoft Fabric
The date is fixed, the scrutiny is total, and the window in which information is still useful is measured in minutes.
Aurora Data led the architecture and delivery of the Electoral Commission of Queensland's near real-time analytics platform supporting the 2024 Queensland State General Election. Built on Microsoft Fabric, the platform enabled operational decision-making while polling was live.
Under live election conditions there is no maintenance window and no second attempt. The platform had to be correct, available and fast at the same time, on a day that could not be rescheduled and would be examined afterwards in public.
It is the clearest example of what this practice is for: modern platform architecture applied where the consequences of getting it wrong are immediate and visible.
I have spent more than thirty years designing and modernising enterprise data platforms, across government and private sector organisations.
My work focuses on helping organisations move from fragmented legacy analytics environments toward modern lakehouse architectures capable of supporting advanced analytics, AI and real-time decision intelligence. That is as much an organisational problem as a technical one, and I treat it that way.
I combine hands-on technical expertise with consulting experience: facilitating architecture workshops, guiding platform strategy, and helping teams scale modern data platforms they can actually operate once the consultants have gone.
Most recently I led the architecture and delivery of the Electoral Commission of Queensland's near real-time analytics platform for the 2024 State General Election, built on Microsoft Fabric.
Credentials
30 years a Microsoft Certified Trainer.
Three decades of accreditation is unusual, and it shows up in the work. Complex architecture has to be explained before it can be agreed to, and explaining it well is a separate skill from designing it. Engagements routinely finish with a team that can carry the platform themselves.
Platforms
- Microsoft Fabric
- Azure Data Services
- Azure Databricks
- Power BI
- Microsoft SQL Server
Engineering
- Designing database solutions
- Performance tuning
- Lakehouse architecture
- Data governance
Instruction
- Microsoft Certified Trainer
- SQL Server training
- Technical instruction
- Curriculum development
Contact
If you are weighing up a platform decision, it is worth a conversation.
Whether that is a target-state architecture, a Fabric estate that is not behaving, or a team that needs lifting. Brisbane based, working with organisations across Australia.