Experts reckon that in 2023, the amount of data held globally is about 80 zettabytes. Now, that’s a lot of data and if trends continue as they are, by 2025, that number will nearly double but here’s the thing – data is useless without context. There has to be some way to transform this data into actionable intelligence and this is where Business Intelligence Applications like Power BI can help.
If you are new to Power Bi then a brief snapshot might help. Microsoft’s Business Intelligence and visualisation tool (Power BI) is a cloud-based collection of apps, software, and connectors that aggregates, contextualises, and interprets raw business data into an interactive visual dashboard.
More than 250,000 organisations, including 97 percent of Fortune 500 companies, rely on Power BI to translate their raw data into easy-to-understand visual and numerical reports vital to making informed, practical business decisions – and it’s easy to understand why.
Power BI is robust, powerful (up to 100 million rows of data), and it turns raw data into elegant and easy-to-understand visuals that empowers organisations to make informed decisions. So, let’s run through a brief history of this ground-breaking application.
A Brief History of Power BI
Power BI began like many great inventions do, as a top-secret project with a cool code name! It started in 2006 as the brainchild of Thierry D’hers and Amir Netz from Microsoft’s SQL Server Reporting Services Team. At the time, it was a classified project with the code name “Gemini.”
Project Gemini harnessed the power of Microsoft’s SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) and transformed it into an in-memory storage engine.
Gemini debuted in 2009 under the name “PowerPivot,” which was a free Excel extension. However, it remained undiscovered by the data science community until Microsoft PowerPivot expert Rob Collie blogged about it to Excel users.
Then, the company added Data Explorer (later renamed “Power Query”) to its menu of Excel add-ins. Unfortunately, even though PowerPivot and Power Query were widely accessible and wildly popular, emailing massive Excel files proved to be a problem. In addition, there was no way to schedule data refreshes.
In 2015, Microsoft paired the two add-ins and renamed the business intelligence tool “Power BI.” Even before the application hit the virtual shelves, it garnered enough excitement that over 500,000 unique users signed on to test and help design the revolutionary new product. Then, just months later, Power BI went public.
The rest, they say, is history. But it’s also the future.
What is Power BI?
At its highest level, Power BI enables organisations to pull raw data from numerous cloud-based (SaaS) systems and transform it into actionable data using a powerful, interactive, and easy-to-use user interface (UI). In addition, the platform isolates what’s essential to provide invaluable insights into the metrics individual users need.
Top Features
Power BI is feature-rich and agile. Its most popular features include:
- Direct connectivity to Excel and easily integrates with other Microsoft products
- Ability to compress data and extract insight from large datasets – up to 100 million rows as opposed to just over 1 million for Excel.
- Customisability using R and Python
- Enabling users to build interactive maps
- Using Power Query to import, filter and translate data
- Availability of the mobile app in all versions
- Enabling users to re-use datasets across multiple platforms and reports (Pro and Premium versions)
- An adaptive and friendly user experience. Through its active and dynamic online community, Microsoft listens to user input and adapts Power BI accordingly with monthly updates.
Why Power BI is Different
Business leaders have multiple business intelligence tools to choose from, so why do 97 percent of them use Power BI?
- With just a few clicks, any user can generate dynamic reports.
- Power BI also features data discovery, data transformation, and perhaps most importantly, data modelling.
The simple UI lets users create and visualise reports via a centralised mobile or desktop dashboard and, because Power BI is SaaS, there are no hardware costs or ongoing upgrade costs. Power BI is scalable and portable, and its upgrades are automatic.
Finally, for businesses looking to integrate machine learning tools into their workplace, it gives users access to a catalogue of pre-trained but customisable machine learning models. These machine learning algorithms can produce real-time results and actionable insights.
How Power BI Compares to Excel
As we know, Power BI’s roots were as an Excel add-in, but today it stands on its own. Those who are uninitiated to Power BI might wonder why Microsoft offers two seemingly competitive data analysis applications. Still, when you dig a little deeper, it’s clear that the two applications are very different. Below is a comparison of strengths and weaknesses:
Excel Strengths
- Fast calculations – You can’t beat Excel’s speed and ease in making calculations, operations, and creating formulas.
- Multiple uses – Excel is not just a data science application. Organisations use Excel in accounting, human resources, operations management, and of course, business analysis. Excel tasks include data entry and scraping data from a website without switching apps.
- A wide variety of templates – While the application is fully customisable, there are several included templates, many of which require no previous Excel training.
- Great for creating tabular reports
- Advanced calculation tables – Excel allows users to create complex personalised calculation tables.
Excel Weaknesses
- Collaboration is awkward – To collaborate in Excel, a file needs to be saved in the cloud or manually shared.
- Data limits – Excel is limited to 1 million rows of data.
Power BI Strengths
- An assortment of visualisations – We can’t talk about Power BI’s strengths without talking about its interactive visualisations. Power BI’s visualisations are interactive, intuitive, and gorgeous! It features drop-and-drag functionality, letting even relatively new users modify the looks of a report. Users can also apply filters and interact directly with the app. Administrators can purchase and download custom visuals from Microsoft Marketplace. Options include maps, charts, graphs, KPIs, R script visuals, etc.
- Powerful collaboration – Power BI lets users collaborate in real-time, and with Power BI Service, multiple people can work on the same file at the same time.
- Connectivity – Power BI connects to multiple data sources, including Excel, SQL Server databases, Google Analytics, social media analytics, Azure sources, cloud-based sources, etc. Power BI can also access multiple Big Data sources.
- Excel integration –Users can upload and view Power BI data in Excel; this is especially beneficial when using tabular reports.
- Unprecedented connectivity – Power BI is cloud-based and can access and extract data from nearly any system or application.
- Personal Gateway – Personal Gateway allows users to authenticate on-premise data that is outside the firewall. Then, the cloud-based Power BI UI can use that data.
- Robust data capacity – Power BI can handle 100 million rows of data.
- Intelligent, automatic updates – Power BI updates automatically after taking real user experiences into account.
- Power BI Embedded – Power BI Embedded lets developers embed or add Power BI reports to apps and websites.
- Ideal for key performance indicators and dashboards
Power BI Weaknesses
- Not designed for complex tables – Power BI has trouble handling multiple links between tables. Users need to ensure that additional data models have unique fields, or Power BI could end up confusing the tables.
- Bulky UI – Power BI’s user interface appears busy with icons and options, sometimes blocking the view of dashboards and reports.
- Difficult to configure visuals – Microsoft includes a wide variety of visuals with Power BI. However, while users rarely need to configure visuals, customisation options are limited.
- Power BI’s DAX formula is sometimes called rigid – Power BI is built around DAX as an expression language. DAX can be challenging. Concatenating more than two elements requires nesting statements.
- Complex – On its own, Power BI is an intuitive, relatively simple tool to import data and create reports. However, multiple interrelated tools add to its complexity.
- Closed-source – As with all Microsoft Office suite products, Power BI is closed-source.
While both Power BI and Excel are databases, they are designed for integration. Most organisations use Excel for tabular reports with limited data requirements, and Power BI for data analysis and visualisations.
What Are the Three Types of Power BI Licenses?
Power BI offers a desktop version along with Pro and Premium versions.
Power BI Desktop – Free Version
- Best for individuals
- Supports all developmental functionalities
- Cannot share the content on the cloud
- Builds reports on a desktop or laptop computer (local machine)
- Integrates with multiple data sources
- 1GB cloud storage for reports and data
- Exports to Excel, PowerPoint or .pdf
- Visualises data using Python
- Builds visualisations with R
Power BI Pro
At £7.50 per user per month, Power BI Pro offers all of the functionality of the Power BI Desktop version, plus:
- Ability to share data and reports with other Pro users
- 1GB dataset limit
- Up to 10GB storage per user
- Can export reports onto a SharePoint site or website
- Maximum 8 scheduled refreshes per day
Power BI Premium
Power BI Premium has two options: Individual and Enterprise. An individual Power BI Premium license costs £16 per user per month. Both subscription options offer all the functionality of Power BI Pro with increased storage, sharing, and scheduled refresh options. Larger organisations might opt for the Power BI Premium enterprise subscription, which starts at £3,996 per organisation per month. However, there are some differences between the two subscription options.
Power BI Premium Individual
- 10GB dataset limit
- 100TB storage limit
- Maximum 48 scheduled refreshes per day
Power BI Premium Enterprise
- Sharable and usable for every authorised member of an organisation
- 100TB of storage and eight vCOREs
- Free users can view and analyse reports, but without input
Who Uses Power BI?
With versions to suit most individual and business needs, anyone is a potential Power BI user. As a result, all business segments use Power BI. Its customers include powerhouses such as Nestle, Adobe, Ricoh, HP, Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Carnegie Mellon University, BP, and thousands of other major global organisations.
Although any authorised user can create valuable reports for their department, Power BI is best suited for power users, those for whom Excel is insufficient. In addition, Power BI is closed-source, which means many data scientists find it limiting. However, it is an excellent tool for data analysts.
How Can I Learn Power BI?
Power BI is robust and complex with out-of-the-box functionality, but there is a learning curve. Programming experience is not required. However, Excel fluency and data analysis experience are helpful.
There are a lot of free resources on the internet that will get you started. For example, DataCamp offer a free ‘starter course’ which you can sign up to here: Introduction to Power BI
Conclusion
Quality data is the world’s most valuable resource, and just like other resources, it requires a deep understanding of how to extract gems from raw materials. A skilled Power BI developer mines, harvests, and polishes the jewels businesses rely upon for data-driven intelligence.
Power BI is ubiquitous among businesses, governments, and nonprofits, which means it’s a valuable skill in every type of industry.