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Bottom Line
For data mining, the strength of Microsoft Power BI is the ability to easily capture and assemble data from diverse sources, particularly other Microsoft tools and platforms. The BI solution offers dashboards that deliver interactive panels. These panels display Big Data information sets through smaller tiles. Microsoft Power BI makes it easy to share tiles with others.
It also supports robust data analytics reporting, including pre-defined templates and the ability to customize reports for specific requirements. A Q&A question box allows users to ask questions in natural language. It makes suggestions and offers recommendations. There’s also tight integration with Office 365 products and Azure cloud.
Product Description
Microsoft Power BI delivers on-premises and cloud-based business intelligence and analytics to a spectrum of uses, including non-data scientists, business analysts, power developers and data scientists. It connects to numerous data sources, including Microsoft Excel, and offers scalable dashboards, strong filters, interactive reports, rich visuals and the ability to share data with colleagues and other users.
Microsoft BI handles data collection, preparation and processing tasks within a unified platform. It supports third party data repositories such as Salesforce as well as augmented reality and mixed reality running with Microsoft HoloLens.
Overview and Features
User Base
Non-data scientists, business analysts, power developer and data scientists.
Interface
Graphical drag-and-drop.
Integration
ETL tools that access data from hundreds of supported on-premises and cloud-based sources, including Dynamics 365, Salesforce, Azure SQL DB, Excel, and SharePoint.
Reporting Formats
Ad hoc analysis
Ad hoc reporting
OLAP
Trend Indicators
Customizable dashboard
AI and Machine Learning Support
Yes, though Azure and third parties.
User Sentiment
Microsoft earned a 4.3 rating at Gartner Peer Insights. It received the Customers’ Choice 2018 award from Gartner.
Pricing
$9.99 per month per user. Power BI Premium, which acts as a virtual server in the cloud, starts at a cost of $4.995 per month, though the price varies, depending on scalability and usage requirements.
| Microsoft Power BI | |
|---|---|
| Focus | Wide ranging functionality in an easy-to-use package. |
| Key features and capabilities | Connects to numerous data sources. Highly scalable dashboards, strong filters and strong reporting and visualizations. Connects to Microsoft’s HoloLens. |
| User comments | User friendly and extremely powerful. Some difficulties with more advanced visualizations. |
| Pricing and licensing | Desktop version is free for individual users. $9.99 per month per user. Power BI Premium, which acts as a virtual server in the cloud, starts at a cost of $4.995 per month, though the price varies, depending on scalability and usage requirements. |
