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CSA Loom — the Microsoft Fabric experience for Azure tenants where Fabric isn't yet available: lakehouses, warehouses, notebooks, semantic models, Activator rules, Data Agents, across Commercial, GCC, GCC-High, and DoD IL5

2-hour technical evaluation — CSA Loom

Comparative positioning note. This document is written from the perspective of Microsoft Azure, Cloud Scale Analytics, and CSA Loom. Any description of third-party or competing products, services, pricing, or capabilities is derived from publicly available documentation and sources believed accurate at the time of writing, and is provided for general comparison only. We do not claim expertise in, or authority over, any non-Microsoft product or service; the respective vendor's official documentation is the authoritative source for their offerings, which may change over time. Nothing here is intended to disparage any vendor — where a competing product has genuine advantages, we aim to note them honestly. Verify all third-party details against the vendor's current official documentation before making decisions.

Audience: customer infra lead + security lead + (often) the architect team from the 60-min deep-dive. Goal: leave with azd up running against the customer's test subscription, Console accessible, and a signed-off "we'll deploy production in [N weeks]."

This is the commit meeting. Two hours, hands-on, technical.

Pre-reqs sent 48 hours before: 1. Customer provisions a test subscription with Contributor + User Access Administrator on it 2. Customer creates an Entra group Loom Admins (test) and shares the object ID 3. Customer reserves an unused /16 CIDR block for the hub VNet 4. Customer installs az CLI 2.64+ and azd CLI on the laptop they'll run the deploy from

If any of these aren't ready when the meeting starts, run the recovery branch at the bottom of this doc.

Agenda (120 min)

Min Topic Who drives
0-10 Pre-flight checklist + customer-side verifications Customer infra
10-15 Workshop preview — 5-day CoE outcome Microsoft
15-25 Architecture lightning recap (10 slides max) Microsoft
25-90 Hands-on azd up deploy + post-deploy bootstrap Both
90-100 Console walkthrough (the aha) Microsoft
100-115 Decision matrix worksheet — Loom vs alternatives Both
115-120 Commitment ask + paperwork Microsoft

1. Pre-flight (Min 0-10)

Run this checklist on the call. If any answer is no, escalate before proceeding.

# Check How to verify
1 az login works against test sub az account show returns the right sub ID
2 azd version >= 1.10 azd version
3 Customer has Contributor + UAA on the sub az role assignment list --assignee <user-oid> --scope /subscriptions/<sub-id>
4 Entra group object ID handed over Customer types it into chat
5 CIDR block reserved Customer confirms /16 isn't peered to anything
6 Power BI Premium F-SKU available in target region az resource list --resource-type Microsoft.Fabric/capacities shows availability
7 Databricks Premium quota in target region az vm list-usage -l <region> --query "[?contains(name.value,'standardEv4')]"
8 ADX quota az vm list-usage -l <region> --query "[?contains(name.value,'D14_v2')]"
9 AOAI capacity (TPM allocation) az cognitiveservices account list-skus -l <region>
10 KV access from customer laptop n/a — we provision a fresh KV

If 1-5 fail, abort to recovery branch (you can't run azd up without them). If 6-9 fail, deploy with *Enabled=false flags on those services and document the gap.

2. Workshop preview (Min 10-15)

Brief overview of the 5-day Federal CoE workshop:

  • Day 1 — Architecture review + boundary mapping
  • Day 2 — Hands-on Lakehouse + Notebook + Warehouse
  • Day 3 — Real-Time Intelligence + Activator + Data Agents
  • Day 4 — Forward-migration planning (Delta → OneLake)
  • Day 5 — Custom workshop on customer's actual workload + handoff

Mention the Commercial CoE workshop is the same content adapted for non-federal customers.

3. Architecture lightning recap (Min 15-25)

Skip if the architect team did the deep-dive recently. Else run slides 5, 7, 11, 13 from the pitch deck — just the architecture spine. 10 minutes max.

4. Hands-on azd up deploy (Min 25-90)

This is the meat of the meeting. Customer infra lead drives; Microsoft narrates.

Step 1 — Clone the repo (Min 25-30)

git clone https://github.com/fgarofalo56/csa-inabox.git
cd csa-inabox/platform/fiab
ls bicep/

Show them the bicep tree. Highlight main.bicep, params/, and modules/admin-plane/ + modules/landing-zone/.

Step 2 — Pick the boundary (Min 30-32)

BOUNDARY=commercial   # or gcc, gcc-high, il5, commercial-full

If the customer's audit boundary is FedRAMP High → commercial. If GCC identity → gcc. If IL4 / IL5 → gcc-high / il5. If they want everything default-on → commercial-full.

Walk the param file briefly: 

cat bicep/params/${BOUNDARY}.bicepparam

Step 3 — Set the admin group OID (Min 32-34)

ADMIN_GROUP=<the object id customer shared in step 0>

Step 4 — Validate (Min 34-37)

az deployment sub validate \
  --location eastus2 \
  --template-file bicep/main.bicep \
  --parameters bicep/params/${BOUNDARY}.bicepparam \
  --parameters loomAdminGroupObjectId=$ADMIN_GROUP

If validation fails, the error message points at the offending param. Resolve before proceeding to the real deploy.

Step 5 — Deploy (Min 37-77)

az deployment sub create \
  --name loom-eval-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S) \
  --location eastus2 \
  --template-file bicep/main.bicep \
  --parameters bicep/params/${BOUNDARY}.bicepparam \
  --parameters loomAdminGroupObjectId=$ADMIN_GROUP \
  --no-prompt

This takes 35-55 minutes. While it runs:

  • Watch the Azure portal — show the customer the resources appearing in real time in rg-csa-loom-admin-<region>
  • Walk through what each module does (network, identity, monitoring, Container Apps, Cosmos, Key Vault, ACR)
  • Answer architectural questions while they wait

Step 6 — Post-deploy bootstrap (Min 77-87)

After the deployment finishes:

# Pull workflow context
SUB=$(az account show --query id -o tsv)
TENANT=$(az account show --query tenantId -o tsv)
RG=rg-csa-loom-admin-eastus2
CONSOLE_UAMI=$(az identity show -n uami-loom-console-eastus2 -g $RG --query principalId -o tsv)

# Grant Graph roles (Directory.Read.All + User.Read.All)
export LOOM_UAMI_OBJECT_ID=$CONSOLE_UAMI
export AZURE_TENANT_ID=$TENANT
bash scripts/csa-loom/grant-uami-graph-roles.sh

# Optional: register Console UAMI in Databricks workspace SCIM
bash scripts/csa-loom/bootstrap-databricks-scim.sh

Open the post-deploy bootstrap workflow file so the customer sees this is a real, runnable script — they can run the same workflow in their own GitHub repo / Azure DevOps pipeline.

Step 7 — Get the Console URL (Min 87-90)

LOOM_FQDN=$(az containerapp show -n loom-console -g $RG \
  --query 'properties.configuration.ingress.fqdn' -o tsv)
echo "https://$LOOM_FQDN"

Open it. They should see the MSAL sign-in. Sign in with their Entra identity.

5. Console walkthrough (Min 90-100)

This is the aha. Use demo-script.md section "First-deploy walkthrough":

  1. Home — show the deployment status pills (all green)
  2. /workspaces — create one
  3. Pick "Casino Analytics" from /apps (or any sample app), install into the workspace
  4. Open a notebook — show real cells, run one (it'll spin up Spark)
  5. Open /admin/security — show the Purview tab pulling real data
  6. Open /admin/users — show the displayName + department coming from Entra (Graph enrichment is now on by default)
  7. Open /copilot-loom — show the 30-tool orchestrator

By minute 100, the customer should be saying "OK, this is real."

6. Decision matrix (Min 100-115)

Run this worksheet with the customer's team. It's a Loom vs alternatives self-assessment.

Dimension Loom Competing data warehouse (Gov) Competing data-ops platform (IL5) Databricks Gov
Microsoft strategic alignment ✓ ✗ ✗ partial
Boundary support today (FedRAMP High / IL4 / IL5) ✓ partial ✓ partial
Open source under the covers ✓ ✗ ✗ ✓
Direct Fabric migration path ✓ ✗ ✗ partial
Console SaaS-feel UI ✓ ✓ ✓ ✗
5-day CoE workshop ✓ varies ✓ varies
Cost to start $0 (Azure consumption) $30K+ commit $200K+ $0 (Azure consumption)
Customer-managed (no proprietary lock) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✓

Have the customer fill in a weight per row (0-10) based on their priorities. Multiply through. Loom should come out ahead on Microsoft- alignment-heavy + cost-conscious + Fabric-migration-path customers.

7. Commitment ask (Min 115-120)

The close. Choose the one that fits the customer's signal:

"We're sold" close

"Great. The next step is the 5-day workshop. I'll send the SOW tomorrow. Can you confirm a workshop start date in the next 4-6 weeks?"

"We need to socialize" close

"Understood. The path forward is this 2-week trial: keep the deploy running, walk through tutorials 01-05 with your team. Two weeks from today we re-convene; if it passes their gut check, we book the workshop. Same time, same Webex?"

"We have concerns" close

"Walk me through what's blocking — I'd rather lose the deal honest than win it on overpromises. Let's add 30 minutes after this to dig into your concerns."

Recovery branch — pre-flight failed

If pre-flight checks 1-5 fail:

  • Customer doesn't have UAA on sub: abort azd up. Run a deploy validation only (az deployment sub validate) — that exercises the bicep without provisioning, so they see "this is the real blueprint." Re-book the eval for after their IT team grants UAA.
  • No Entra group: create one in real time using az ad group create — takes 2 minutes; customer's Entra Admin must be on the call.
  • No CIDR block: deploy with the default 10.0.0.0/16 and document that production-deploy needs a different range.

After the meeting

Within 24 hours:

  • Send the recap email with: Console URL, sign-in instructions, SOW if applicable, link to the 5-day workshop, link to tutorials 01-05
  • Schedule the workshop start date if customer committed
  • Schedule the 2-week re-convene if customer is socializing
  • Loop in customer-success rep for the warm hand-off