Data are the fundamental building blocks of all businesses, large and small, and in every sector, whether they are large consumers of technology or not. Even the farmer or non-profit arts organization uses it, let alone the tech-infused giants of industry that we all read about. It is an organization’s responsibility to transform data into actionable insights to attain the business goals set by corporate strategists. Providing the right solution at the right time to customers usually results in successful competitive differentiation.
However, the challenge is to take the guesswork out of decision-making and use the data to make logical predictions and sensible operational moves. Power BI can greatly aid companies in this pursuit. It is a business analytics tool that allows one to pull back the curtain on many of the thorny issues that an organization meets. It takes data—in its various forms—and gives it meaning and context. In particular, it enables users to create reports and dashboards to offer actionable insights into their data.
Components of Power BI
Power BI has three powerful components designed to build, visualize, and distribute business insights drawn from the data that support you and your business.
Power BI Desktop
Microsoft Power BI Desktop is a desktop application under the Power BI umbrella designed explicitly for advanced reports. The Power BI Desktop makes data discovery easy, and you can create rich, interactive reports with visual analytics without coding. Power BI Desktop can take data from many sources such as Dynamics 365, Salesforce, Excel, and others and produce deep, actionable insights for a broad range of scenarios. You can easily format your report with custom colors, gradients, and other style options on a drag and drop canvas. You can even make it interactive for the user. After completing your reports, you can publish them in the Power BI Service, where accessibility and sharing of the report are controlled by the licensing.
Power BI Service
The Power BI Service, otherwise known as Power BI Online, is the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) part of the Power BI. In the Power BI service, dashboards help you track your business status through custom visualizations. For example, reports you have created in the Power BI Desktop can be published to a dashboard and distributed throughout your organization. A single click on a dashboard report opens the report in full detail, if that is desired. In addition, this BI Service enables you to create apps and workspaces with relevant data in them, which lets you view your reports and dashboards appropriately grouped and displayed in one location.
Power BI Mobile
Power BI embraces apps on the go with Power BI Mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows 10 mobile devices. These mobile apps let you easily connect to and interact with your cloud and on-premises data—wherever you go. In addition, Power BI Mobile allows users to securely access live Power BI reports and dashboards on any device.
Power BI License Types
Power BI has three types of licenses: Free, Pro, and Premium, with which you can access Power BI in the cloud.
Power BI Free License
The Power BI Free license is the entry-level license for Power BI. The Power BI Free license gives storage of 10GB in the cloud for hosting Power BI reports or Excel workbooks, maximum of 1GB report size and it can be refreshed up to eight times a day with a minimum of 30 minutes between each refresh.
Best suited for:
- Start-ups and small scale businesses
- Businesses with minimal data analysis
- Businesses with a low budget for business intelligence tools
Power BI Pro License
Power BI Pro is a license offered to individuals that enables them to read and interact with reports and dashboards on a Power BI Service published by others.
A user with a Power BI Pro license has access to features of Power BI Free such as storage of 10GB, maximum of 1GB report size, an automated refresh of eight times a day, and 30 minutes between each refresh. The key difference between Power BI Pro and Power BI Free is that Pro users can access and share dashboards and reports with other Pro users. It can be bought as a standalone license, separate from other Office 365 apps.
Best suited for:
- Medium to large scale businesses
- Multi-site organizations
- Organizing and analyzing extensive data
Power BI Premium License
Unlike the Pro or Free license, the Power BI Premium license is available in 2 models — per-user license and per capacity license and is unique in that it provides access to reports for all users in the organization. Capacity is the computing power reserved to an organization for its Power BI utilization which a service admin will provide through the Power BI Premium admin portal. The Power BI Premium pricing varies between Power BI Premium Per User and Power BI Premium Per Capacity models.
Power BI Premium enables more users in your organization to get the most out of Power BI with better performance and responsiveness. The Premium license lets users host large datasets with storage of 50GB and a total of 100TB of data storage.
Best suited for:
- Organizations with large consumers of data
- Organizations with complex datasets
Power BI Premium Generation 2
Power BI Premium Generation 2, simply Premium Gen2, is the latest version of Power BI Premium, released recently. Depending on your Premium capacity, you can choose either Premium or Premium Gen2. One can use the original version or switch to the latest version free of cost.
Here are a few features of the Premium Gen2 license:
- Provides the capability to license the Premium Per User in addition to computing capacity
- Fewer memory restrictions
- Separated between scheduled refreshes and report interaction
- Performs high-speed operations
PreludeSys’s Power BI expertise
Power BI is a powerful tool that can appear daunting at first. If you are serious about bringing the proven benefits of Power BI to your business, the experts at PreludeSys are ready to help you choose the right options. We can tailor the right Power BI solution for your organization
