Licensing Power BI Report Server is a joke

[JimmyConway]

Hi there,

I need to write this because today I realized the new model of Microsofts new reporting-landscape and I am just really disappointed. I am working with microsoft products since SQL Server 2000 and later on reporting services back in the days was just absolutely great because it just came with the SQL Server and with few steps you had an up-to-date report portal. 

At my actual job I have build a really nice reporting environment and squeezed everything out of it e.g. also things like uploading csv files trough the portal with stored procedures in background or nice button in navision dynamics for direct data imports & exports. Beginning of this year our decision makers had a look at Power BI and just wanted to have this nice looking tool, so we bought 5 Power BI Pro and I used the on premise data gateway to connect to our datawarehouse. I updated the reporting environment to the new web portal and was looking forward to get the integration of power BI reports maybe soon (it was clear that this would cost from then). 

Now I am sitting here with two reporting structures, on the one hand the on premise web portal and on the other hand the Power BI Desktop and if I now want to use Power Bi Reports combined with paginated Reports MS sets a minimum Price for 4217 EUR per month ? So translated that means on the one hand, if you are a small company, go ahead and use the old stuff that should be enough for your company and on other hand if I as Expert want to keep up to date with MS Products I need to thing to go to a company that can afford using MS Reporting Landscapes...at the moment I am just speechless

[samgreene1]

"if I now want to use Power Bi Reports combined with paginated Reports MS sets a minimum Price for 4217 EUR per month ?"

That is one way to do it.  If you have SQL Enterprise licenses with SA, you can deploy a power bi report server on-prem.  People who publish to this server need a Power BI subscription.  You can also deploy a certain number of cores if you have Power BI Premium (maybe up to 16?).  You'll need at least 4 cores of sql server enterprise with SA for a on-prem server.  

[Anonymous]

Yep. 

Problem is the minimum Premium backend is a 16 core solution.   Huh??!!!   In my 25 years of Enterprise BI experience I have never seen a 16 core report server (8 at the most and even that is usually overkill).

Furthermore, this solution is more than 3 times the cost of an Azure Premium App Service Plan equivalent to 16 cores.   Does the extra functionality provided on top of the free Server really justify this price disparity?

Would make more sense to keep the Pro licensing model and for dedicated Server functionality provide it as an Azure App Service template and let us manage the App Service size (and therefore cost) at our discretion.   

[Anonymous]

One thing to consider with the cores, especially with regards to PBI Reports is that each report fires up an instance of Analysis Servcies to service that report with the imported data. So the old comparatively low memory and processor footprints of SSRS are going to be somewhat different.

I'm not suggesting that 16 cores doesn't feel like overkill. It does. But I suspect the core count an=d memory allocation is going to be somewhat higher than has traditionally been the case.

I suspect MS are just resistive to the whole on prem concept and are keen to "push" businesses towards their cloud offering and the pricing strategy is part of that. 

[Anonymous]

"I'm not suggesting that 16 cores doesn't feel like overkill. It does. But I suspect the core count an=d memory allocation is going to be somewhat higher than has traditionally been the case."

Even a full-on SSAS server would not need 16 cores for most cases.   Point is, this is the minimum spec and it is already much higher than necessary for probably 80 to 90% of organisations.   The only explanation I can see is that it is intended to compensate for inefficiencies inherent in the self-service model.

"I suspect MS are just resistive to the whole on prem concept and are keen to "push" businesses towards their cloud offering and the pricing strategy is part of that."

I think the SaaS approach is great and a cloud solution is exactly what I want but MS need a more flexible offering.   At the moment, moving to Premium would be a jump of nearly twenty times our current spend.   How on earth could I justify that?

[samgreene1]

"I think the SaaS approach is great and a cloud solution is exactly what I want but MS need a more flexible offering."

Agreed, it's a large cost when you just want to try it out or use it for a small or new user pool.