On January 27th, 2015 James Phillips – Microsoft’s General Manager for Data Experiences announced the latest developments in Power BI. The latest news include the availability of Power BI FREE for everyone, as well as subscription based version called Power BI Pro. In addition, there is a new tool available, called Power BI Designer, which allows business analysts to create their own dashboards and publish them to any Power BI site.
The new Power BI service aims to enable easy-to-use, accessible tools that can be leveraged by anyone; bringing the power of Business Intelligence to everyone, and lowering the barrier to entry.
Power BI is a cloud-based service that allows users to leverage their on-premise data, while getting the benefits of cloud-based analytics. This Hybrid approach provides the advantage of shorter, more frequent updates to the reporting tools, while keeping and managing your data on-prem.
Finally, Microsoft is pushing forward with their mobile capabilities. They have released a preview of Power BI for iPad available in the Apple App Store, and will be introducing iPhone, Android, and Windows universal apps later this year.
Below is a breakdown of the different features available with the free version (Power BI) vs. the subscription version (Power BI Pro)
Plans available at general availability |
Power BI FREE |
Power BI Pro
|
| Data Capacity Limit |
1 GB/user |
10 GB/user |
| Create, view and share personal dashboards and reports |
● |
● |
| Power BI Designer for content authoring |
● |
● |
| Explore data with natural language* |
● |
● |
| Power BI mobile apps for iOS and Windows |
● |
● |
| Content packs for services like Dynamics, Salesforce, and SendGrid |
● |
● |
| Import data and reports from Excel files |
● |
● |
| Data Refresh | ||
| Scheduled Data Refresh |
Daily |
Hourly |
| Support for Streaming Data |
10K rows/hour |
1M rows/hour |
| Live interactive connectivity to data sources |
|
● |
| Data Management Gateway |
|
● |
| Collaboration | ||
| Share refreshable team dashboards and reports |
|
● |
| Create and publish customized content packs |
|
● |
| Use of Active Directory groups for sharing & managing access control |
|
● |
| Shared data queries through the Data Catalog |
|
● |
* Natural language query is currently only supported in English.
Source: http://powerbi.com/dashboards/pricing
For the full Microsoft announcement, check out Microsoft’s Official Blog.
