Quickstart stack

A Microsoft and Azure stack: the enterprise counterpart

The enterprise counterpart to the Google-native stack. Events go through Azure Event Hubs, Synapse is the warehouse, Power BI reports, and Dynamics 365 feeds customer data in through Synapse Link.

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9 tools · 11 connections

Scroll sideways to see the whole stack. Arrows show the direction data moves. Every connection is listed by name below.

What it is for

Companies standardized on Microsoft (Azure for data, Dynamics for sales, Power BI for reporting) build marketing on the same platform, because security review and procurement are already done.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud receives its audiences by SFTP file drop. That is what many of these stacks really do, and drawing it shows where the daily delay comes from.

Why each tool is here

OneTrust Consent Management

Consent management. It records what each visitor agreed to and passes that state on, so the tools downstream only collect and use what they are allowed to.
Google Tag Manager Tag Management

Tag management. Sends web events to Event Hubs.
Azure Event Hub Event Streaming

Event streaming. Takes web events and Marketing Cloud engagement, and passes them to storage and to Synapse.
Azure Blob Storage Cloud Storage

Storage for the raw event capture, bulk-loaded into Synapse hourly.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales CRM

The CRM. Streams into Synapse through Synapse Link and syncs contacts to Marketing Cloud.
Azure Synapse Data Warehouse

The warehouse. Web events and CRM data meet here, and audiences are exported from here.
Power BI Analytics & BI

Reporting, through a semantic model refreshed hourly.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Customer Engagement

Customer engagement. Receives audiences by daily SFTP export and sends engagement events back.
Google Ads Advertising

Paid search. Receives Customer Match audiences from Synapse.

How data flows

Tag Manager streams web events to Event Hubs. Event Hubs Capture writes them to Blob Storage while a second stream feeds Synapse; Blob Storage is bulk-loaded into Synapse hourly. Dynamics 365 streams CRM data into Synapse.

From Synapse, Power BI refreshes hourly, Marketing Cloud gets audiences daily over SFTP, and Google Ads gets Customer Match daily. Dynamics syncs contacts to Marketing Cloud every 15 minutes, and Marketing Cloud streams engagement back to Event Hubs.

Every connection

OneTrust to Google Tag Manager Consent signal · Real time, on each event
Google Tag Manager to Azure Event Hub Web events · Streaming, continuously
Azure Event Hub to Azure Blob Storage Event Hubs Capture · Streaming, continuously
Azure Event Hub to Azure Synapse Streaming ingest · Streaming, continuously
Azure Blob Storage to Azure Synapse COPY INTO (bulk load) · Batch, hourly
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales to Azure Synapse Synapse Link (CRM) · Streaming, continuously
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales to Salesforce Marketing Cloud Contact sync · Batch, every 15 minutes
Azure Synapse to Power BI Semantic model refresh · Batch, hourly
Azure Synapse to Salesforce Marketing Cloud Audience export · Batch, daily
Azure Synapse to Google Ads Customer Match · Batch, daily
Salesforce Marketing Cloud to Azure Event Hub Engagement events · Streaming, on each event

When this is the wrong choice

Your company runs on Google Cloud. The Google-native quickstart does the same jobs with native exports.
You need audiences in Marketing Cloud within the hour. The daily SFTP export is the bottleneck; replace it with an API connection or reverse ETL.

Other quickstart stacks

Make this stack yours

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