Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is the cloud service (SaaS) for users of Office 365 providing opportunities and functionality of a business intelligence (BI).

2020: Growth of use by the government in a week for 42%

Microsoft announced increase in use of cloud services of Azure by 775% in regions where because of a pandemic of a koronavirusny infection social distancing is entered or the samoizoliyation is recommended. So, use by the government of Power BI for distribution among citizens of information on spread of a coronavirus increased in a week by 42%. It became known on March 29, 2020. Read more here.

2015: Beta testing of Power BI service

On January 29, 2015 Microsoft announced start of testing of preliminary option of the updated cloud service of a business intelligence of Power BI. It is at the same time announced the subsequent free use^[1].

Date of completion of testing is not announced. Also how the Power BI service provided to users of Office 365 will change is unknown.

Microsoft declared the desire to expand a scope of users and to provide this tool of the business analysis to all users. Before access to service cost from $20 to $52 for the user a month, and for the address to him the subscription to Office 365 was required. Now Power BI will independently work, it will have the website, and users will receive free of charge in the order up to 1 GB of memory and support of a data stream up to 10 thousand lines per hour.

The company offers paid Power BI Pro option for $9.99 a month and 10 GB of space, support of a data stream up to 1 million lines per hour, additional functionality - a possibility of use of the Active Directory groups and data access, for example, stored on the platform of the user.

Microsoft provides also built-in connectors for the addressing popular cloud applicaions, including Salesforce, Marketo, Zendesk and GitHub, supports stream data transmission.

For simplification of data visualization, work of the users who are not specialists in the field of the business analysis the new Power BI Designer tool which is the application for the PC or the notebook which can be loaded free of charge from the website Power BI is created. This tool which can be used together with Excel helps to create visual charts and reports, to publish them, to share using Power BI service.

Other functions also are a part of preliminary Power BI option: Dashboard allows to integrate the different visualized data on one screen that in real time to monitor key indicators (KPI).

There were mobile applications for tablets and smartphones:

• from Apple Store it is possible to load the native application for iPad,
• the version for iPhone should appear within a month.
• for Android and Windows universal native applications which will work on devices with a different size of the display are provided.

Innovation of service - the connectivity for access in real time to the Microsoft SQL Server and data sources of other companies provided in Power BI Pro. Users will be able to address from the GetData page in the self-service mode copies of a SQL Server database which are managed by IT service of the enterprise, and to the cloud systems of other companies, such as Salesforce. According to Microsoft, at the same time they will not need the help from IT service, and connection will support stream data transmission in real time.

According to observers, with release of this option of BI service, Microsoft will disturb the market of a cloud e-business intelligence and will throw down a challenge to IBM Watson Analytics and Tableau Software.

2014: Availability of Microsoft Power BI service

On February 12, 2014 the Microsoft Russia company announced availability of Power BI service to a business intelligence. Service simplified obtaining information from different environments and data management of any volume and structure by means of the familiar Office 365 tools, in particular tables of Excel.

General description

The Power BI tools help to accumulate any data types from heterogeneous environments, whether it be information, from a private, public cloud or it is stored in a cloud of provider. Users can share reports with colleagues, work jointly with data and manage effectively workflows in real time on any mobile devices.

Power BI integrates functionality, necessary for improvement of a business intelligence: public and corporate directory of data, the newest searching tools of information, work with applications, rich interactive visualization, opportunities for joint work.

Opportunities are available:

• fast creation of the websites for a business intelligence: means of Power BI allow to create quickly the joint website for exchange of the work tables containing data and analytics;
• storage of the latests version of reports with the planned data-refresh: the reports which are in a cloud can be connected to local data for loading of regular updates now;
• support of the directory of data for information search: now IT departments can use the function of the directory of data available in Excel to simplify work on search and connection to corporate data;
• management of requests to data at the level of a command: an opportunity to exchange not only work tables, but also search queries in Power Query for Excel.
• the Q&A function allows users to ask questions as of a natural language (without use of a programming language) and to receive instant answers in the form of interactive tables, charts or diagrams.

Lesson of use of an analytical packet of Power BI from Microsoft - a three-dimensional geographical visualizer for Excel 2013

Notes