Power BI is a business analytics service by Microsoft. It aims to provide interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities with an interface simple enough for end users to create their own reports and dashboards. Power BI allows easy connection to data sources, simple data cleaning and modeling, and creating reports and dashboards full of interactive visualizations that can then be shared with others.
What does Power BI do?
Power BI allows users to connect to a wide variety of data sources both on-premises and in the cloud. This includes databases like SQL Server, Excel files, online services like Salesforce or Google Analytics, and more. Once the data is connected, Power BI provides tools for shaping, cleaning, and modeling the data into a useful form.
The key features of Power BI include:
- Interactive visualizations and dashboards
- Natural language queries for analysis
- Data connectivity to many sources
- Gateway for on-premises data access
- Data preparation capabilities
- Collaboration and sharing
- Mobile applications
- Embedded analytics
- AI insights
With modeled and cleaned data, users can create interactive reports and dashboards containing advanced visualizations. These visuals allow business users to analyze trends, metrics, and KPIs by interacting with the visuals. Power BI also provides natural language capabilities for querying data and getting answers quickly.
Finished reports and dashboards can be shared with others within an organization. Power BI has mobile applications for accessing analytics securely from mobile devices. It also enables embedding visualizations into custom applications. Power BI provides a unified view for creating, collaborating, and sharing analytics and insights.
Who uses Power BI?
Power BI can be used by a variety of roles within an organization, from business analysts to department heads to C-suite executives. Some of the key roles and personas who use Power BI include:
- Data analysts and BI professionals – Create data models, reports and dashboards with a drag and drop interface.
- Department heads – Track KPIs and metrics for their department through interactive dashboards.
- Business analysts – Get insights from company data to analyze performance and trends.
- Marketing analysts – Visualize campaign and sales data to optimize marketing.
- Operations managers – Monitor operational metrics and KPIs through role-specific dashboards.
- Executives/C-suite – Strategize and make data-driven decisions with views of business performance.
Power BI empowers these various roles to work smarter with data, enabling faster analysis and better insights. With it’s self-service model, Power BI allows these roles to create their own reports and dashboards tailored to their needs rather than relying exclusively on IT.
What are the components of Power BI?
Power BI has a number of components that work together to enable business intelligence and analytics:
Power BI Desktop
This is the desktop application used to connect to data, transform data, and design reports and dashboards. Analysts use Power BI desktop to clean, model, and visualize data in preparation for publishing reports and dashboards.
Power BI Service
This is the SaaS service that hosts published Power BI content like reports and dashboards. Users can access the content through the online service or mobile apps. The service allows sharing and collaborating on analytics content.
Power BI Gateway
An on-premises data gateway that allows Power BI to connect to data sources within an organization’s on-premises environment. This provides access to on-premises data stores.
Power BI Mobile Apps
Mobile apps for Windows, iOS, and Android allow users to securely access analytics from their mobile devices. Users can view and interact with reports and dashboards on the go. Alerts and push notifications can also be configured.
Power BI Report Server
An on-premises report server for hosting and sharing Power BI content on-premises instead of the cloud. This allows organizations to keep content behind the firewall if needed.
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| Power BI Desktop | Desktop app for data prep and report design |
| Power BI Service | Cloud service for hosting and sharing content |
| Power BI Gateway | On-premises data gateway |
| Power BI Mobile Apps | Mobile apps for content consumption |
| Power BI Report Server | On-premises report hosting |
What are some key features of Power BI?
Some of the most notable features and capabilities of Power BI include:
Interactive data visualizations
Power BI provides a large variety of visualization types to explore data beyond just tables and charts. Visual types like tree maps, funnel charts, scatter plots, and more can be customized to fit data. Visuals are also highly interactive allowing details on demand, cross-filtering, drill down, and more.
Natural language queries with Q&A
The Q&A feature allows users to query data using conversational natural language. Users can type a question in plain English and Power BI provides the visualized answer pulling from the underlying data model.
Dashboarding
Interactive dashboards can be created to combine visuals into a single view for tracking KPIs, metrics, and other data points. Slicers, filters, drill downs, and other features enable interacting with reports.
AI-powered insights
Power BI integrates with Azure AI to provide automated insights. These include anomaly detection in time series data, forecasting future trends, determining key influencers and drivers in data, and more AI-powered analytical capabilities.
Data prep and modeling
Power BI Desktop provides self-service data prep tools for shaping, cleansing, and mashing up data from disparate sources. This allows non-technical users to prepare data to their needs. The resulting data can also be modeled for additional relationships and calculations.
Big data connectivity
Power BI provides connectors for querying and importing data from a wide variety of sources including SQL databases, Excel, cloud applications, and more. This includes big data sources like Spark, HDInsight, and Azure data lakes.
Collaboration and sharing
Finished reports and dashboards can be easily shared with other users through the Power BI service. Content packs also allow sharing entire collections of data models, reports, and dashboards as a single package.
How does Power BI integrate with other Microsoft products?
As a Microsoft product, Power BI integrates tightly with other Microsoft technologies within the Azure and Office 365 ecosystem. Some examples of Power BI’s integration capabilities include:
Power BI and Excel
Power BI integrates well with Excel, allowing analysts to leverage their existing Excel skills. Data models can be imported from Excel. Reports and visuals can also be exported to Excel.
Power BI and Azure
As an Azure service, Power BI can easily access data stored in other Azure offerings like Azure SQL Database, Azure Data Lake, Azure Blob Storage, and more. Power BI also integrates with Azure Active Directory for security.
Power BI and Dynamics 365
Pre-built content packs are available for Power BI to connect with Dynamics 365 data like Sales, Customer Service, Finance, and Operations. This provides easy analytics over CRM and ERP data.
Power BI and SQL Server
Power BI is optimized for working with data from SQL Server databases. The Power BI gateway enables live connection to on-premises SQL Server instances for analysis.
Power BI and Office 365
Users can sign in with their Office 365 accounts. Content can be easily shared to Teams or SharePoint Online. Power BI reports can also be embedded into Office 365 applications.
This level of integration across Microsoft’s product portfolio makes Power BI a natural analytics choice for organizations invested in other Microsoft technologies.
How does pricing work for Power BI?
Power BI uses a freemium software licensing model. Some key aspects of Power BI pricing include:
Free Version
Power BI Desktop is a free download for data prep and modeling. The Power BI mobile apps are free to use. The Power BI service offers limited free use for individual users.
Pro License
The Pro license provides full capabilities of the Power BI service starting at $9.99 per user monthly. Additional capabilities like dataflows, AI insights, and enhanced worksharing are available.
Premium Capacity
For larger deployments, Premium capacity allows dedicated resources for production workloads starting at $4,995 monthly. This offers greater scale, performance, and capabilities.
Embedded Licensing
Power BI visuals and reports can be embedded into custom applications through embedded licensing which starts at $200 per month.
Power BI Report Server
On-premises Power BI Report Server licensing starts at $5,319 for 16 cores and allows unlimited user access.
Overall the pricing model allows organizations to start for free and scale up capabilities through Pro licenses and Premium capacity as adoption and needs grow.
| License Type | Starting Price |
|---|---|
| Free Version | Free |
| Pro License | $9.99 per user monthly |
| Premium Capacity | $4,995 monthly |
| Embedded Licensing | $200 monthly |
| Power BI Report Server | $5,319 for 16 cores |
What are some benefits of using Power BI?
Adopting Power BI can provide an organization and its users many benefits including:
- More self-service analytics – Reduces dependency on IT by enabling users to create their own reports and dashboards quickly.
- Unified view of data – Connects data from many sources for a single pane of glass analytics repository.
- Interactive visualizations – Enables deeper understanding of trends and root causes through interactive data visualizations.
- Simplified data prep – Low-code/no-code data modeling and transformation opens analytics to business users.
- Natural language queries – Conversational interface through Q&A allows easily querying data using plain language.
- Enhanced productivity – Reduces time spent hunting for insights with easy report and dashboard creation.
- Collaboration – Content packs and apps allow groups to collaborate around shared data models and reports.
- Embedded analytics – Analytics can be embedded into business applications for easier data-driven decision making.
- Mobile access – Mobile apps enable data consumption from anywhere, on any device.
What are some key advantages over competing platforms?
Compared to alternatives like Tableau, Qlik, and Oracle Analytics Cloud, some advantages of Power BI include:
- Lower total cost of ownership through bundled licensing of Office 365.
- Tighter integration withrest of Microsoft’s stack like Azure, SQL Server, Dynamics 365.
- Capabilities like natural language Q&Amp;A queries.
- Strong capabilities around data preparation and modeling.
- Interactive dashboards with responsive design.
- Machine learning-powered insights and analytics built-in.
- Hybrid model supports both cloud and on-premises deployments.
- Embedded analytics and custom visuals enable greater customization.
For organizations using other Microsoft products, the synergies with the rest of the Microsoft product stack make Power BI an obvious choice to consider.
When is Power BI the right choice?
Power BI is well-suited for organizations that need:
- Self-service business intelligence and analytics.
- Unified access to a wide range of data sources.
- Interactive data visualizations and exploration.
- Ad hoc reporting capabilities.
- Seamless access to both cloud and on-premises data.
- Enterprise-grade governance, security, and scalability.
- Advanced analytics like forecasting, predictions, and AI-driven insights.
- Deep integration with Microsoft ecosystem.
- Hybrid deployment flexibility.
- Embedded analytics and custom visuals.
Power BI excels at bringing together governed self-service BI, big data analytics, and pervasive mobility at an affordable price point for most organizations.
Conclusion
Power BI provides a powerful yet accessible business intelligence and analytics platform. With interactive visualizations, natural language queries, robust data prep, AI insights, and seamless access to data wherever it lives, Power BI enables organizations to democratize data and empower users to make data-driven decisions. Combined with its affordable pricing and integration with Microsoft technologies, Power BI is a compelling option for unlocking the value in data.