Power BI

As managing vice president, Rob Helm covers Microsoft collaboration and content management. His 25-plus years of experience analyzing Microsoft’s technology... more

Power BI is Microsoft’s hosted business intelligence (BI) service and the focus for most of the company’s BI development. The service provides an Internet-based platform for sharing refreshable reports among users, includes refreshable access to on-premises data, and has several interactive features for self-service analysis. A new release of the Power BI service arrived in July 2015 and removes the dependency on SharePoint Online and Excel and delivers a new Web portal and mobile applications. The update also simplifies distribution of preconfigured reports and includes a free design tool and a free tier of service, which could expand the user base. However, organizations will likely require the paid tier, and existing customers will need to migrate reports and dashboards to the new release by the end of 2015.

The roadmap for Power BI includes a new Enterprise Gateway for central control of access to on-premises data, more features for the Power BI Desktop application, and tighter integration with on-premises data sources to support role-based access.

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