Licencing of Power BI Server?

[loler]

Dear all,

I have a general question about the licencesing of Power BI Server for smaller organization. We are a company with about 400 people, which would like to enter into the world of BI. As I have already used Power BI in the past and liked it, we decided to go for it, particularly regarding the fact, that the start by using Power BI Desktop doesn’t need higher investments and usability is really great.

The only one problem we have is the fact that our company does not want to use cloud for storage data and publishing the report (at least for the time being), which would be possible with the Power BI Server as a part of Power BI Pro package (I believe). I spend some time on trying to understand the licencing of different solutions, but still not sure how to proceed and what would be the best solution for our needs.

At the beginning we would be about 2 people creating reports and probably 2-3 people from the management get and read them- so a very limited amount of user. If I’m looking at the pricing for Power BI Server for non-cloud-based reporting I see that a Power BI Server would cost me 4,995 USD per month at least, which doesn’t do any sense for 4-5 users. Again, for the beginning we want a small, more or less self-service, locally storage solution and reports and I cannot believe that we would need to spend 5 kUSD every month on it (we will definitely not do this and in case it’s truth we will go for other solution).

Special message to Microsoft if you are reading it – I understand that you are a huge organization, but it should be possible to get in touch with someone able to answer questions like above without spending about 30 minutes try to discover a phone number or a e-mail address (and finally did not found any of these). So if there is any chance to speak to someone, who could explain our options, I would really appreciate it (writte me a PM with the contact details).

Regards and many thanks in advance.    

[acabanchik]

Hi 

To use Power BI Report Server you have two options:

- Have a license of SQL Server EE + Software Assurance
or
- Power BI Premium


Other option (Hybrid)
- Analysis Services Tabular (on-premise) + Power BI Gateway + Power BI Services

best regards

[lolerloler]

Hi acabanchik,

thanks for your answer.

Power BI Premium starts with 9 USD per user, but does it include the Power BI Report Server, which I can install, operate localy and which would distribute the reports among other Power BI Premium user wihtout any data storage in the cloud?

If yes, would this mean that for 4-5 users we would have about 50 USD per month included the Power BI Report Server? 

Thank and regards

[acabanchik]

Hi 

bad news!!!
"Power BI Pro" has a cost of USD 9 per user, and does not include Power BI Report Server.

With Power BI Pro the sharing is through the cloud, although there you have two options:

1. you upload Power BI files with imported data, therefore your data would be in the cloud

or

2. you can upload reports with live connections to Analysis Services (on-premise ), so you would be uploading reports without data but rendenrized in the cloud.

Power BI Report Server is obtained under two forms of licensing:
1- Power BI Premium, with a base cost of USD 5000 per month, a little expensive I understand for 5 users
or
2- SQL Server Enterprise Edition + Software Assurance

This second option I understand is viable if you have previously licensed SQL EE, for example used in the company for your DW.

For a scenario of 4-5 users who need to see Web I only find two options at this moment:

1- Power BI Pro x 5, published on PowerBI.com, that is, with data imported into the cloud, sometimes not allowed in government or banking entities in some countries

2- Analysis Services Tabular 2016/2017 (Standard Edition) + Power BI with Live connection published in the cloud
. In this scenario, the data is in your organization, but you use Power BI.com to render Web reports. Accessing the data via Power BI Gateway

best regards

[Anonymous]

MSFT ->  Am I able to host Power BI Report Server on a different server than my SQL Server Enterprise Edition (database engine)?  I don't have premium, but I do have software assurance.

[lolerloler]

Many thanks for your answer, very helpfull!