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What we tell our customers when migrating to Power BI

Power BI has seen viral growth. It is one of the industry leaders in BI and Analytics Platform. One of the reasons for such growth is its integration with existing Microsoft investments. We would say, it’s easier and cost-effective to get started with Power BI.

Naturally, everyone would want to migrate to Power BI. Be it from Tableau, Google Data Studio, or Excel or SSRS or Telerik/HTML/Javascript charting libraries. There are few patterns that have emerged as we help customers migrate to Power BI.

Following points are a must read if you are looking to migrate to Power BI

Mindset

First and foremost, migration to Power BI needs a change in your mindset. You have been using your old tool for quite some time now. You expect Power BI to mimic its functionality and behavior? No, it may not. Power BI is a Modern Enterprise BI tool. With modern approaches to data modelling, data consumption, sharing and governance, Power BI pushes you to think beyond traditional tools.

Don’t Mimic Excel

For laymen, Power BI is Excel++. They expect to modify a “cell” in Power BI and hope to see changes reflected in Power BI. Wait, wait, wait! Power BI is not Excel nor a replacement for Excel. Power BI gives much more power to data extraction, modelling, and data storage. Don’t expect Power BI to work like Excel. Excel is best suited for calculations, manipulations, and tabular/visual reporting. Power BI is a modern BI tool with storage, compute, data flows, AI, governance – well integrated within the platform. Don’t worry, you can still use Excel with Power BI with “Analyze in Excel” feature. For enhanced functionality, you have Power Apps, Power Automate, etc.

Model driven tool

“Can I fire a dynamic SQL query based on filter selections and user login in Power BI”? Charting libraries use this concept quite often. Please note: Power BI is a model driven tool. There is a model behind which powers the visualization and analytics. You need to start thinking about models and relationships when working with Power BI. You can import the data in Power BI or connect directly/live with supported data sources. Once done, you can slice and dice they way you want.

In Active development

Power BI is a tool that is in active development and growth. There can be some features that are not yet available, but that doesn’t mean you will stop leveraging the power of this modern tool. Power BI has a monthly release cadence and they also publish a roadmap so you know what’s coming in future releases.

They just announced some fantastic updates in MBAS 2020.

A Product for all size needs

Power BI is a suite of products.

Power BI Desktop for authoring and creating reports,
Power BI Online for data distribution, consumption, governance, and management,
Power BI Embedded for embedding in your website,
Power BI Premium for enterprise needs,
Power BI Report Server for on-premise needs,
Power BI Report Builder for paginated/tabular reports (SSRS types reports) and
Power BI Mobile for on the go needs.
Plus, integrations with Excel, SharePoint, Teams, Power Apps, Power Automate, AI, Azure Analysis Services, and many more etc.

We can pickup one or more tools depending on your needs. Power BI has definitely come a long way. Many organizations are taking advantage of this modern BI tool. Why not you?

How to get started?

Here are simple steps you can take to get started on your journey to migrate to Power BI.

Get your current data estate and BI systems audited
Prepare a high level modern BI architecture, roadmap, and transition plan
Implement and rollout in phases
Train and educate your staff/audience
Administrative Support

FAQs

What Licensing options does Power BI provide? Check out our latest blog on Power BI Licensing Guide.

What Features does Power BI provide? Check out our latest blog on Power BI Features – End to End.

Can I do real time reporting with Power BI? Yes, why not. Check this blog: Real time reporting with Power BI.

Can I connect directly to my data sources?

Are there any cases where customers have moved away from Power BI? Yes, sometimes, we will blog this soon. Do subscribe to know when that is released.

Contact us, if you want to get your BI and data estate audited. Or signup for one of our services to migrate to Power BI.

Or, use this form below to get started.

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Our first impression of Tableau – intuitive, powerful, beautiful

#PowerBI experts, Crush on #Tableau

Power BI and Tableau has been ranked as leaders in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Analytics and BI 2020. It becomes critical for businesses to choose between one of these solutions for their analytics and BI workloads.

Of late, we have been receiving a lot of questions and interests in choosing BI tools. Recent trends show that companies are open to Power BI or Tableau as long as their needs are met within budget.

We are open to choosing and suggesting BI tools to our customers. We decided to give a try to Tableau.

Our first impression of Tableau

Tableau is intuitive. Tableau is quick. Table is powerful. Tableau is beautiful.

Tableau’s power is its data visualization capabilities.

You need a dual axis chart with bars and lines? You got it.

You need a dumbell chart? You got it.

You need advanced analytics? You need greater control over tooltips? You need annotations?

You got it!

Looks like Tableau was built ground up with data visualization in mind. And, it’s correct. Tableau founders were from graphics and visualization background.

How does it compare with Power BI?

After our hands on with Tableau we can say Power BI visualization capabilities though familiar, are limited. You have the same decade and century old charts.

You can be creative with visuals but then you need to learn Typescript and Node.js. You can create new and advanced charts but development and learning curve is high.

How about modelling capabilities?

Power BI excels in data modelling capabilities. DAX and multi-dimensional concepts are inbuilt in Power BI.

Tableau lacks much of these. Minimal multi-dimensional support, no functional language like DAX. Tableau relies on calculation scripts, LOD etc.

How about Dashboards and Reports on canvas?

Tableau has concept of Sheets and Dashboards. Power BI has concept of Reports and Dashboards.

We feel Power BI wins here as you have greater control over the layout and structure of your reports. You can create Business dashboards quite easily in Power BI.

What about Publishing options?

With Tableau you can publish to a Tableau server or Tableau online. Same with Power BI.

However, Power BI service (or Power BI online) though looks cluttered sometimes, is quite powerful and feature rich. Navigation can be confusing. It has a concept of workspaces.

Tableau online is clean and has simple interface. Admin capabilities and options look limited. It has a concept of projects. Great UX.

What about cost?

To a large extent Power BI wins here. Power BI Desktop is free. Power BI Online is free for personal use. This makes Power BI quicker to adopt and penetrate within your org.

Tableau unfortunately is not free. It’s costlier than Power BI. Though Tableau has a free version called Tableau Public, its functionality is limited.

Note: We need to evaluate cost in a larger scheme of things keeping view of number of creators, number frequent and occasional users.

How is the support for developer tools?

Microsoft is known for developing products for extensibility. Power BI wins here with APIs to manage everything you need. Power BI lacks APIs for designer and modifying models.

Tableau has some support for tools but it’s limited.

What do you recommend?

Power BI and Tableau, both are great tools. However, recent job trend shows greater demand for Power BI developers.

To sum up: Power BI is a great end to end BI tool. Tableau is a great visualization tool.

We recommend to check your existing BI investments, and BI and analytics needs. Based on this and your budget, take a call.

Given high demand for both the tools, we are working on creating a comprehensive guide comparing Power BI and Tableau. We will cover in detail their BI capabilities, Data Integrations, Enterprise support, APIs and costs with screenshots from both the tools.

Join our list to be the first one to know when the guide is available.

Do you want us to evaluate which BI tools fit your business needs? Contact us now.

visualization

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and BI Platforms 2020

Business Intelligence tools have been in market since years. What has now started differentiating them is:

Support for Enterprise reporting needs – large datasets, on-prem and cloud, data governance, security, agile dev cycle
Augmented analytics capabilities – Machine Learning capabilities and AI assisted insights generation and explanation

This Magic Quadrant will help data and analytics leaders complement their existing solutions or move to an entirely new vendor.

Directly from Gartner:

Augmented capabilities are becoming key differentiators for analytics and BI platforms, at a time when cloud ecosystems are also influencing selection decisions

Here’s what Gartner Analysts think in terms of numbers:

By 2022, augmented analytics technology will be ubiquitous, but only 10% of analysts will use its full potential.

By 2022, 40% of machine learning model development and scoring will be done in products that do not have machine learning as their primary goal.

By 2023, 90% the world’s top 500 companies will have converged analytics governance into broader data and analytics governance initiatives.

By 2025, 80% of consumer or industrial products containing electronics will incorporate on-device analytics.

By 2025, data stories will be the most widespread way of consuming analytics, and 75% of stories will be automatically generated using augmented analytics techniques.

Here’s presenting the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms.

Microsoft (Power BI), Tableau, Qlik and ThoughtSpot are leaders in this space. How did this look like last year?

*Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms – 20*19

How about 2015 vs 2020? Lot has changed since then. The Leaders space was crowded back then.

Here’s the direct link to the full report on Gartner’s site with each vendors strengths and cautions in detail along with 15 Critical Capabilities of an Analytics and BI Platform.

For 13 consecutive years, Gartner has recognized Microsoft as a Magic Quadrant Leader in analytics and business intelligence platforms. When they reference Microsoft, they are referencing to the Power BI platform.

Looking to adopt Power BI in your organization? Book specially crafted service packages for your modern BI vision.

Get in touch now!

power bi premium

Power BI Premium or Power BI Pro – the answer is here!

Power BI comes with multiple licensing model

Power BI Pro
Power BI Premium
Power BI Embedded
Power BI Free
Power BI Premium Per User (new!! – read the post here)

In this post we will cover Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium licensing model.

The licensing model to go with is determined by following three factors:

Cost
Number of users (creators, viewers, occasional viewers)
Features required

The first two factors are the most critical in deciding the licensing model.

It’s a choice between multiple Pro licenses or multiple Premium licenses.

What is Power BI Pro/Power BI Premium?

A Power BI Pro is a per user license currently costing around $10 per user per month, while Power BI Premium is a capacity license currently costing around $5000 per capacity node per month.

Yes, the cost difference is huge. But, wait, there are lots of things hidden in that $5000.

Power BI Premium is a capacity license. It can support 450 users report viewing needs (see example below)
Power BI Premium is for content consumption rather than content creation
Large number of external readers (out of org users with no Power BI license)
AI, Paginated reports, XMLA read/write and many other features
Note: With 1 Premium capacity node you get 8 cores, 25 GB RAM and 6 parallel refreshes.

What does all this mean?

If you want to create, author and publish reports, you definitely need Power BI Pro licenses. You cannot get away with that. Whether to go with Power BI Premium or not, it depends.

Scenarios

Say, if you have 500 users in your org and out of 500 users

50 users will be creating content
200 users will be frequently accessing the content
250 users will be occasionally accessing the content

Then, you require

50 Power BI Pro licenses
1 Premium capacity node

With the premium capacity node we can serve the “consumption” needs for 450 users.

How did we come up with that conclusion? A simple Power BI Premium calculator is available to help us decide number of licenses (link below).

But, say your org has 100 users with 50 creating content and 50 viewing, it’s recommended to go with 100 Pro licenses (total cost $1000 per month) than a premium capacity node unless you need additional features like AI, external readers etc.

Power BI Premium vs Power BI Pro – Which licensing model should I choose? The answer is here!
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Next steps?

If you are still not sure of the licensing model or worst, if you are not sure if Power BI is fit for your organization’s BI needs then you may request a free consultation.

You may fill the form below or directly setup a call

schedule a call

Or, fill up this form and we will get back to you with time slots within 12-24 business hours.

Notes

Power BI Premium Calculator: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/calculator/

Power BI premium also comes with additional feature sets including AI, Incremental refresh, Power BI Report Server, Paginated (SSRS types) reports, XMLA read/write and others – or better to say Enterprise features.

Power BI Pro vs Power BI Premium

If you need a quick comparison between Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium feature sets, please check this table provided by Microsoft. (Click the image to view the entire table)

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/#powerbi-comparison-table

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Refresh Power BI report page every min. and show on a TV

This question has been asked multiple times in forums, blogs and in Power BI community.

How can I refresh my Power BI report every min and show it on a TV full-screen?

This is a lovely scenario where you want to show Power BI report with metrics, business performances, team performances etc. on a public display. May be on a TV in a hallway or in Factory Control rooms!

But, how do I do this?

It’s quite simple to setup!

(1) Make sure your data is refresh-able live. Either through direct query to a supported source (SQL etc.) or live connection to Analysis services.

(2) In your report URL in Power BI Service, append ?chromeless=1

This setting will open your report in full screen mode.