Power BI - great "free" BI tool for analysts and developers.
April 05, 2021
Power BI - great "free" BI tool for analysts and developers.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Power BI Pro
Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Power BI
[Microsoft] Power BI is being used by our BI team (developers) and business analysts in selected Departments. It is a tool of choice for a quick data analysis and dashboard creation primary for 311 city services (service requests), Health/Vaccination (COVID) public facing analysis and purchasing improvement process.
- Ability to connect to many different data sources
- Ease of access (basic version is free)
- Integration with office modules
- Cloud based (Azure) architecture
- Confusing licensing for Pro and Premium
- Steep learning curve
- Too many features are hard to find
- Ability to create professional visualizations in minutes
- Connection to previously unavailable data sources
- No need for team of developers
- Quick turnaround time
Microsoft Power BI is part of the MS product family, and since we are a Microsoft shop (Office365, Azure, SQL DB) it fits into our environment with centralized management/administration. This alone justified additional costs (licensing). Tableau and SAP Business Objects are natively on premise tools, so there is an additional effort to go to the cloud. Also, each is separately managed (except with AD authentication).
SAP Business Objects is an enterprise reporting solution, so it is not a fair comparison. However, Tableau is very similar to Power BI, with great visualizations and more user friendly features. However, it is much more expensive and with complex public facing server option.
SAP Business Objects is an enterprise reporting solution, so it is not a fair comparison. However, Tableau is very similar to Power BI, with great visualizations and more user friendly features. However, it is much more expensive and with complex public facing server option.
Do you think Microsoft Power BI delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Microsoft Power BI's feature set?
Yes
Did Microsoft Power BI live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Microsoft Power BI go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Microsoft Power BI again?
Yes