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Federated Factory Overview
The Federated Factory
A secure, governed mesh of interconnected Insight Factories built to scale across your enterprise. The Federated Factory model empowers individual teams or business units to run autonomously while seamlessly sharing data and insights across the organisation.
It’s decentralised agility with centralised control all in one cohesive ecosystem.
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Federated Data Architecture for Secure, Scalable Enterprise Collaboration
The Federated Factory
The Federated Factory is a modern data architecture designed for distributed enterprises, consortiums, joint ventures, or any organisation needing to securely share data across business units, subsidiaries, or cloud environments.
At its core is a mesh of interconnected Insight Factories, each one a fully managed, autonomous Data & AI platform deployed within your own cloud tenant. These factories operate independently, while still enabling secure, governed sharing of data, code, models, and insights across the federation.
Built on Azure, Databricks, and Lakehouse principles, the Federated Factory supports real-time collaboration, eliminates uncontrolled data replication, enforces strong governance, and maintains a consistent, evergreen architecture across your enterprise.
It’s decentralised by design, yet unified through technology and governance empowering each domain to move faster, with confidence and control.
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Secure and Governed Data Sharing Across Federated Lakehouse Environments
Secure, Governed Data Sharing
The Federated Factory is built to make secure, governed data sharing seamless by design. Data is ingested and curated once, then made available across the organisation without duplication or replication. This eliminates the chaos of scattered datasets and ensures a single source of truth.
At its core, the Federated Factory is powered by Lakehouse architecture, leveraging Databricks Unity Catalog and Delta Sharing to enable in-situ data virtualisation. This allows data to remain securely where it is while being shared across business units in a controlled, auditable, and fully governed way — enabling central oversight with decentralised agility.
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Decentralized Agility with Centralized Consistency for Autonomous Data Solutions
Decentralised Agility with Centralised Consistency
The Federated Factory model empowers every participant in the federation to operate autonomously with a full Insight Factory platform at their fingertips. Each unit can ingest its own data, build tailored solutions, and deploy them independently, without relying on a central team.
By standardising the technology footprint across the enterprise, the Federated Factory avoids duplication while preventing the central hub from becoming a bottleneck. It’s the best of both worlds: seamless data sharing across the organisation, with the speed and flexibility of decentralised execution.
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Customer Stories
How We Work with Customers
The Federated Factory gives our customers the ability to move faster, scale smarter, and collaborate securely. By combining centralised governance with decentralised autonomy, each business unit can drive its own data and AI program — while seamlessly sharing insights across the organisation.
Factories in the Federation
Case Study: Downer Group Federated Data & AI Solution
Downer Group leverages the Federated Factory to power its enterprise-wide Data & AI program. Deployed across multiple business units, group functions, and service centres the model provides centralised, governed data sharing while giving each business unit the autonomy to run its own program, tailored to its own needs.
See how insightfactory.ai partnered with Downer to deploy a virtual mesh of Lakehouses across the organisation unlocking agility, consistency, and measurable value at scale.
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Federated Factory: FAQs for Scaling Data & AI Across the Enterprise
FAQs
This FAQ section answers the most common questions about how federated deployment works, what’s required to implement it, and how it unlocks value across business units.
How does insightfactory.ai ensure governance and security across the Federation?
Each Insight Factory instance is integrated with Unity Catalog for fine-grained access control, and Delta Sharing enables secure, auditable data exchange across factories. This ensures that while teams move fast, data remains protected, compliant, and under central control.
Can I start with a single Insight Factory and grow into a Federated model?
Yes. Many clients begin with one Insight Factory and scale to a Federated model as their needs expand. Additional Insight Factories can be deployed quickly, with minimal incremental cost, and seamlessly integrated into the governance and data mesh structure.
What are the benefits of federating multiple Insight Factories?
Federation allows large organisations to decentralise delivery while maintaining consistency, security, and quality. It accelerates local team delivery, reduces bottlenecks, supports autonomy, and ensures cross-functional data sharing with governance built in.
How is a Federated Factory set up within an organisation?
Deployment begins by establishing a central Insight Factory, followed by additional Insight Factories configured per business unit or function. These are interconnected through governed sharing protocols, enabling decentralised execution with centralised oversight—all built and managed on your Azure tenant.
How does pricing change between an Insight Factory and a Federated Factory?
The Federated Factory uses the same subscription model as a single Insight Factory, but pricing scales incrementally. We don’t replicate the full platform cost for each additional factory, instead, we apply a nominal uplift for each new Insight Factory deployed within the federation. This ensures organisations can scale their Data & AI footprint affordably, supporting widespread adoption without prohibitive cost increases.