1. Power BI V2.0: Is It Any Good?
Chris Webb
@Technitrain

2. Who Am I? Chris Webb UK-based consultant and trainer:
UK-based consultant and trainer:
Author of several books:
MDX Solutions
Expert Cube Development with SSAS 2008
Analysis Services 2012: The BISM Tabular Model
Power Query for Power BI and Excel
SQL Server MVP
Blogger:

3. Agenda Power BI V1.0 – why did it fail?
Power BI V2.0 – what has changed?
How to buy Power BI V.20
Power BI V2.0 – the future!
Use case: self-service BI on the desktop/in the cloud
Use case: publishing reports to an on-premises server
Use case: analysis of data from 3rd party services
Use case: API-level integration
Use case: SSAS Tabular desktop client tool
Use case: live reporting on Big Data

4. Power BI V1.0 – why did it fail?
Power BI V1.0 was based around:
Excel as the desktop BI tool of choice
Office 365 and SharePoint Online as the means of publishing reports
A great idea in theory… a big problem in practice

5. Power BI V1.0 – why did it fail?
It failed for a number of reasons:
Customers had the wrong version/edition/bitness of Excel
Customers didn’t have Office 365
Power BI + Office 365 subscription was expensive
Customers didn’t like putting data in the cloud
Limited dashboarding/visualisation capabilities
Confusing number of names/components
Competing tools were better!

6. Power BI V1.0 – did it actually fail?
As an end-to-end service, Power BI did fail
But the Excel components are still very successful individually
There is integration between Excel, SharePoint Online, OneDrive For Business and Power BI V2.0

7. Power BI V1.0 – did it actually fail?
The Office BI story is continuing in parallel still:
Some improvements in Power Pivot in Excel 2016
Power Query is native to Excel 2016
New chart types and other BI features in Excel 2016
Power View is still rubbish and Silverlight in Excel 2016 
Who knows what the SharePoint BI v.next story will be…?
Rebranding means that the “Power” brand has gone
Power Query is “Get & Transform”
Power Map is “3D Maps”

8. Power BI V2.0 – what’s changed?
Power BI V2.0 consists of:
Power BI Desktop
PowerBI.com cloud-based reporting and dashboards
Power BI Desktop is: Power Query + Power Pivot + Power View – Excel
You can use Power BI Desktop in two ways:
As a standalone BI tool in itself
To build reports for publishing to PowerBI.com

9. Power BI-Excel integration in the future
Already you can import a data model created in Power Pivot from Excel 2013 to Power BI Desktop
You can’t go the other way… yet?
Excel 2016 will allow you to publish direct to PowerBI.com
Excel worksheets are visible in PowerBI.com
Common request is for Power BI data models to be available as a data source for Excel
On the desktop
In the cloud

10. SQL Server 2016 BI
SQL Server 2016 BI will be getting more love than it has in recent releases
Microsoft seems to understand that on-premises/corporate BI can’t be replaced by cloud/self-service BI
Expect to see some Power BI integration though:
SSRS reports available in Power BI dashboards
What are the plans for Datazen?
Power Query-SSAS/SSIS/SSRS integration has been delayed 
Also expect to see integration of R into Power BI and SQL Server 2016

11. How to buy Power BI V2.0 Power BI Desktop is FREE
PowerBI.com is a two-tier service
Free subscription is meant for personal reporting
$9.99/month gives you a Professional subscription

12. How to buy Power BI V2.0 Advantages of Professional over Free:
Greater data volumes
More frequent data refresh
‘Live’ querying
Data refresh against on-premises data sources
Sharing and collaboration

13. How to buy Power BI V2.0 Other Power BI subscription levels may appear
Power BI will also be available as part of other bundles:
New Office 365 E5 subscription SKU
As part of Cortana Analytics Suite, along with many other Azure BI services

14. Power BI V2.0 – the future!
Power BI is getting a massive amount of investment from MS
RTM is meaningless from a tech point of view – the rate of change will be the same for the foreseeable future
Monthly releases of Power BI Desktop
More frequent updates of PowerBI.com

15. Power BI V2.0 – the future!
If Power BI doesn’t do it now, it may do soon
Mark As Date table a notable missing feature
Power Map integration…?
Also integration with new services like Azure Data Catalog and others TBA
I have confidence in the current management to do the Right Thing

16. Use cases BI means different things to different people
Power BI addresses different BI needs from the SQL Server BI stack
It is not a replacement for SQL Server/SSIS/SSAS/SSRS
It may never be one
Why should it be?
It is more of a competitor to Tableau and Qlik, but even then it is focussing on niches that these tools don’t cover
Whether Power BI is ‘good’ or a ‘success’ will depend on how well it can compete in the use cases that MS is investing in

17. Use case: self-service BI on the desktop
The price is unbeatable!
Is it better than Excel + Power add-ins?
Is it pretty?
Visualisations are now a lot better with RTM release
D3 integration should settle this question once and for all
The UI is still a work in progress
The underlying technology was never the problem
Integration of Power Query and Power Pivot components is confusing

18. Use case: self-service BI in the cloud
Publishing to PowerBI.com is one click
You can also create new reports in the browser
Almost complete feature parity between desktop and cloud
The aim is complete feature parity
Connection back to on-prem data sources via Personal Gateway
Do you want to store your data in the cloud…?
Not feasible yet to share data outside your organisation, yet this is probably the main reason why you would want cloud BI

19. Use case: publishing reports on-premises
MS recently announced an alliance with Pyramid Analytics, a long- establish SSAS client tool vendor
Not an acquisition!
Power BI Desktop will be able to publish reports to an on-premises Pyramid Analytics server
You will have to pay separately for your Pyramid licence
Will other vendors get similar treatment?

20. Use case: 3rd party services
Power BI content packs are available for a number of 3rd party online services like Mailchimp, GitHub, Google Analytics
Provide two things:
Ability to import data from these services into Power BI
A number of pre-created reports that can be edited or added to
No public documentation on how to do this for external data sources yet, but will come soon
Organisational content packs are available now
Presumably some kind of store will be available to download/buy these content packs…?

21. Use case: API-level integration
Power BI is a platform with an ever-growing API
At the moment the API is basic but useable:
Create/delete datasets
Pump data into datasets
Automatically delete old data
This will allow for much deeper integration than content packs will allow: data is pushed in, rather than pulled
Will soon be able to embed Power BI in your own site as well as skin it

22. Use case: SSAS Tabular desktop client tool
For traditional corporate BI customers, you can use Power BI Desktop as a client tool for SSAS Tabular
Multidimensional support coming soon
Data is not cached inside the model – queries pass through to SSAS Tabular (on desktop and in the cloud)
Not a replacement for Excel, more of a companion
Great for demos though
Not a direct competitor for 3rd party client tools
“Super-DAX” in SSAS 2016 could give a performance advantage

23. Use case: live reporting on Big Data
As well as SSAS Tabular, other ‘live’ connections are also available
Azure SQL Database
Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Spark on HDInsight
Useful for scenarios where
Your data is already in the cloud
Your data is too large to fit in a Power BI model
Downside: many modelling capabilities not available yet
Will all Power BI functionality be available in this mode?
What will performance really be like?

24. Summary
At RTM, Power BI V2.0 is good enough to be a successful product
Its price and capabilities make it competitive
It is improving incredibly quickly
Is it aimed at SQL Server BI customers? Not really, though it is getting more attractive
Self service is aimed more at SMBs, Microsoft’s traditional sweet spot
3rd party vendors will also recruit their customers
Also targeting ‘big data’ users who don’t have any other way to analyse their data