8 questions about Power BI

[letterbox]

Hi there,

I have a few questions about the Microsoft Power BI. I am looking to use Power BI for the enterprise. (more or less around 1000 users)

1. What sources I can connect Power BI with (e.g. hadoop, fb etc.)?
2. How do I create queries for example for DW, any requirements for specific language or SQL?
3. How to retrieve data from the Data Lake (e.g. Hadoop, aster, spark etc.) to power BI interface?
4. What are the pros and cons if compared to MicroStrategy or SAP?
5. Security, are there any restrictions while connecting database, any need for a third company?
6. Maintenance, any need for extra administrator roles?
7. How do I integrate with enterprise, how difficult/easy is it?
8. What license should be the best for an enterprise?

[v-jiascu-msft]

Hi @letterbox,

Could you please mark the proper answers as solutions?

Best Regards,

Dale

[v-jiascu-msft]

Hi @letterbox,

Please refer to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/ for details.

1. Hundreds of data sources. Please refer to power-bi/desktop-data-sources.

2. Using the default connector could be the best way to go. Please refer to power-bi/desktop-quickstart-connect-to-data.

3. The same with Q2.

4. Some BI gurus could help with this. 

5. Please refer to the white paper about security here.

6. That depends on the needs of customers. Power BI is a simple and fast tool and also is an enterprise-grade tool. Please refer to power-bi/power-bi-overview.

7. You can embed the Power BI contents with your company. Please refer to power-bi/developer/embedding.

8. That depends on how the company will consume the resources of Power BI. Please refer to power-bi/service-free-vs-pro, https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/.

Best Regards,

Dale

[letterbox]

 Thank you for your reply again! But what are your thoughts on updates and enterprise integration. For example, imagine you have over 1000 users with 1000 pc's how does update will work for each pc and also integration for each pc? seems a hard work to install and update each pc...

[u02cm62]

Desktop is used for analysis, to get the right report looking correctly then you upload to Power BI.com website in a workspace.  Each workspace can be controlled to who can do what in each.  THink of a workspace like a container or folder and setting permissions on a folder per se.  It's not exactly the same, but similar.

As far as Microstrategy and SAP, I was an administrator of both.  Both require FT admins, and developers, the tools are very expensive (hundreds of thousands for a scale that size, and in MSTR's case, Millions, not kidding) as that's our experience.  This toolset gets your feet wet, see if you like it and then negotiate a deal after.  The prices are very cheap in comparison to any "Enterprise reporting" toolset in the past.  To get started, it's very cheap and you can stay there for some time before you get everyone excited to give it a good whirl first.

[v-jiascu-msft]

Thank you very much for sharing with the community. @u02cm62. That's very helpful.

Hi @letterbox,

It seems we were talking about different things. 

1. Almost 1000 people need the Desktop that is a tool to create models and reports. Is it true that over 1000 people will create their own datasets and data models? Or they just consume the reports?

2. Following the item 1 above, if they all need Desktop, I would advise the Desktop Windows Store version that will upgrade automatically. If they just consume the Power BI contents, it wouldn't be a big problem, the end users only need a web browser. 

3. What is the exact scenario in this part?

Best Regards,

Dale

[letterbox]

 Thank  you, Dale for your reply.

Much appreciated!