At a previous employer, we were trying to decide on a BI vendor to fulfil the dashboarding and interactive reporting requirements of the company. At the time, Microsoft’s offering was Performance Point, and to an extent, the PowerView/PowerPivot combo.
By that point, I was absolutely hooked on the power of SSAS tabular and DAX, and I was initially disappointed with how far they were behind Qlikview and Tableau. My imagination ran wild as I imagined the possibility of coupling a tabular model with a great dashboarding tool, but it just wasn’t an option at the time. However, I just didn’t think the new MS would let the data revolution pass them by, so I started reading up on their BI road map, and I was quickly convinced that PowerBI was going to rectify the situation.
Unfortunately, at the time, the management of our IT division decided that they couldn’t wait for Microsoft on a wing and a prayer, and they decided to go another way. I wonder what they’re thinking now…
This week MS announced PowerBI premium, and I’m convinced that it is an absolute game changer in the BI delivery space.
People far smarter than me have done analysis on pricing and other comparisons between the competing products, but I am more and more certain that PowerBI is about to explode into mainstream awareness.
For anyone who hasn’t seen PowerBI in action yet, play around with this dashboard I created based on some fake teacher assessment data.