After more
than half a year in limited preview, Microsoft today launched Power BI for
Office 365, its Business Intelligence for Office 365 Enterprise subscribers. In
combination with Excel, Power BI allows users to model and analyze their data
and query large datasets with complex natural-language queries. The tool also
allows users to easily visualize their data in Excel with the help of Power
View and Power Map.
As Eron
Kelly, Microsoft’s general manager for SQL Server product marketing,
most business users feel so comfortable using Excel that the company decided
not to build a new dashboard for Power BI. “We want to make use of the ubiquity
of Excel,” he said, and Power BI will allow far more users access to critical
business intelligence tools than ever before.
Instead of
having to go to IT and ask for data, wait for it, and then probably ask IT to
slice the data in a different way again, tools like Power BI allow for
self-service business intelligence. The barrier to entry is relatively low, and
as the volume of available data increases and companies look to make their
processes more data-driven, Microsoft hopes that Power BI will become the go-to
choice for enterprises.
Despite the
self-service model, though, IT still remains in control of what data is shared.
Microsoft allows IT admins to set up data sources for their users, but what
makes the tool especially powerful is that this data can be mixed with publicly
available data, too. That can come from Microsoft’s Azure Marketplace, but for
advanced users, the tool will also allow you to query any REST API or service
that uses OData, too.
The
stand-out feature of Power BI, however, is its Q&A tool. This allows you to
ask a question about your data in natural language. Say you are looking at
public data about New York you’ve pulled in from the city’s open APIs. With
Power BI, you can now ask for “noise complaints on Superbowl Sunday compared to
an average day” and the tool will happily give you the answer. The technology
behind this feature is based on a combination of work done by Microsoft
Research and the Bing team.
As a part
of Office 365, Power BI is only available through a subscription and only
available as an add-on to Office 365 Enterprise customers.
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