Power BI Plans Major Expansion of Enterprise Features

• Power BI, Microsoft’s hosted business intelligence service continues to receive investment.
• Power BI is absorbing features from SQL Server BI roles to make it a self-contained BI platform.
• Plans call for simplified user-management and low-level tenancy controls that large organizations need.
• Organizations should evaluate Power BI’s fit in their future BI architecture.
• Most improvements and enterprise features will require Power BI Premium subscriptions.

Power BI is Microsoft’s business intelligence (BI) group of components that includes online services and an on-premises server, report design tools, and client-side applications, which are used collectively to create and share reports, dashboards, and other forms of BI. Power BI is the primary focus on Microsoft’s BI-related investments, and most organizations should evaluate it, even if they have major investments in SQL Server BI now.

Service Overview

Power BI contains numerous tightly integrated software and Microsoft-hosted service components. They include online services and an on-premises server, report design tools, and client-side applications, which are used collectively to create and share reports, dashboards, and other forms of BI. Collaboration features include workspaces, which allow multiple users to work on data models and reports together. (See the illustration “Power BI Components” and the chart “Power BI Back-end Report Hosting Options“.)