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A promise is a promise! As we mentioned in our last post, we will start with our (Analytics and business Intelligence) ABI- Platform series this week. In case you missed it, over the next couple of weeks we will be talking about the four crowned “Leaders” in the last ABI-Platform- study of Gartner, Power BI, Tableau, Qlik Sense, and ThoughtSpot.
You will get brief descriptions of these four BI-Titans, along with information about their most important features and differentiators, at the best Statistance-style: made easy!
So what is Microsoft's Power BI?
Microsoft Power BI is one of the fastest-growing tools in its category. It is a business analytics and reporting tool that you can use to perform analysis and discover insights hiding in your data.
Going into detail, it is a set of software services, apps, and connectors ( e.g Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service, and mobile apps ..) that allow its users to connect to their data sources, conjoin and compare unrelated data.
After that, you can visualize your new combined data in an understandable and interactive way to discover insights, which you can also share with your co-workers or embed into your website. Apart from being recognized as a Leader BI-tool, it was also recognized by Gartner in their Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms in 2019.
One of its major advantages is that it connects to the entire Power Platform of Microsoft, which turns it into an all-round tool with a CDS* and a CDM* (find a little explanation of what these are down below) with which business processes can be continuously streamlined, accelerate, and improved.
Power BI Dashboard
Microsoft now has millions of users around the world using its Power BI cloud service, which was launched just five years ago. Gartner says that the very competitive price has a lot to do with this, but also that “with the releases in 2019, the Power BI Pro cloud service overtook most of its competitors in terms of functionality.” So let's see some of these acclaimed features:
- Connectors: Power BI allows the user to access data from hundreds of sources including files, on-premise, and cloud-based data sources, APIs (Application Programming Interface: they connect or allow different applications to interact with each other), files, Power Platform, and more, without the need for a previous ETL (a data-cleaning process that includes data extraction, transformation, and loading) since it includes this functionality. On the negative side, it does not accept any file larger than 1GB in size, and the Gartner study mentioned some negative feedback from customers regarding this topic, apparently, the connectivity to SAP BW and HANA direct queries could be better. Nevertheless, Microsoft has heard the feedback and is working to smooth it out.
- Performance and data management: Power BI is a very flexible tool. It is self-documenting and allows users to go as deep as they want to explore the data inside M (M is the informal name of Power Query Formula Language). It includes ad-hoc reporting (a visual answer to one specific question generated by the BI tool), predictive analytics, and a very important feature which are interactive visualizations. Regarding that, Microsoft offers a library of custom visualizations to choose from in the AppSource. Having said that Power BI is not a great choice for big enterprises since it is not very good at analyzing very big amounts of data.
- Ease of learning: Microsoft believes that with the help of Power BI, you do not need to be a data scientist or a top IT guru to perform data analysis that is meaningful for your organization. The interface is easy to understand and work with, and the terminology is precise, thought for non-analysts. People with experience in Excel will feel like a pro, due to the fact that it works very similarly as well as combined with it. Experience with other Microsoft programs which, almost everyone has nowadays, is also helpful to get the hang of this tool. Overall, users feel like this is a very friendly tool to use and easy to learn no matter the skill levels.
- Price: This tool is without a doubt the most affordable on the market. Here you have an overview of the options:
- Power BI Desktop: This is a free version of the tool available for single users, it includes custom visualizations as well as data cleaning and preparation.
- Power BI Pro: This option costs $9.99/user/month and Microsoft offers the possibility of trying it for free for up to 60 days. It allows its users to collaborate, publish, share, and do ad-hoc analysis. It is the option for customers interested in self-service BI.
- Power BI Premium: This version starts at $4,995 per dedicated cloud compute and storage resource with an annual subscription. And it includes Enterprise BI, big data analytics, cloud, and on-premises reporting, advanced administration deployment controls and dedicated cloud compute and storage resources.
We hope that you enjoyed, and that you can use this information while choosing the best BI-Tool for you and your business. Remember to always take what you read with a grain of salt and always consider your business's specific characteristics and needs!
Join us next week to find out about the next BI-Leader: Tableau! Until the next time, Your Statistance team!
*CDM = Common Data Model. According to Microsoft, a Common Data Model simplifies the process of bringing data from multiple systems and applications together ( which is normally extremely time-consuming and costly) by providing a shared data language for business and analytical applications to use. The Common Data Model metadata system makes it possible for data and its meaning to be shared across applications and business processes such as Microsoft Power Apps, Power BI, Dynamics 365, and Azure.
*CDS = Common Data Service is basically a data -storage and -retrieving service. It is especially important for users interested in building apps with Power BI, but even if you are not, this works as a data warehouse.
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