Updated: October 23, 2024 (October 3, 2024)

Power BI Back-end Platforms—Oct. 2024

Andrew analyzes and writes about Microsoft's data management, business intelligence, and machine learning solutions, as well as aspects of licensing... more

Microsoft offers customers several Power BI back-end platform options (shown here), including multiple cloud services and an on-premises product, called Power BI Report Server. They vary by support for content types, client tools, features, performance, scaling, security, and licensing.

Back-end Functions as a Repository and Server

The back-end platforms act as repositories for the following components:

Reports
Semantic data models
Data integration pipelines.

They are also the workhorse for numerous activities:

Authenticating users, applications, and data connections
Executing queries and controlling data refresh schedules
Pulling data from various sources via connectors and gateways
Processing data integration pipelines
Rendering reports
Publishing and distributing reports and dashboards
Responding to real-time user interaction
Interfacing with applications.

The Different Back-end Platforms

Back-end platforms include the following:

Power BI Free is designed for individual users and occasional report consumers. It lacks security controls, provides limited data storage capacity and refresh rates, and has other significant shortcomings that typically make it unsuitable for most organizations.

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