Desktop to Online transition - where is the data stored and who can access it?

[purple_ninja]

As a Power BI newbie I'm looking to get my co on board with the advantages of Power BI.

I'm using the desktop application as there is a lot of sensitive information that we would not want outside of the company. All was going well until I realised you can only have one person accessing the file at a time? Is there a way around this? I have multiple execs that will want to see the dashboard but wouldn't want the data on the cloud.

Where is the data held using the free online account? Can it point to a local file on a server or does the data have to be uploaded? How secure is this?

Could we invest in one pro account and and then they can view it securely using a free log in?

Thanks in advance for any help and guidance

[GilbertQ]

@purple_ninja you do now have the option to store your Power BI file in SQL Server Reporting Services.

Here is the current blog post below, and it is currently in technical preview but this could be one of your options.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlrsteamblog/2016/10/27/technical-preview-of-power-bi-reports-in-s...

A question I often ask when companies and people are concerned about their data in the cloud, is if they use Office 365 for Exchage and email? If the answer is yes, then all their most important and confidiential documents are already stored in the cloud. And this goes a long way to getting them to trust the data in the cloud.

Not only that but also almost at every data rest point in the Power BI Service, the data is encrypted both in transit and at rest. I know that Microsoft are looking to have very soon every aspect of the Power BI Service encrypted.

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@purple_ninja Here is a resource and whitepaper that will give you the full details. At a very high level, you need a Pro license and so will your end users if you don't want your data stored in the Cloud (Service).

The data storage location is based on connection type, not license type.

If you import the data into Power BI Desktop, it will push that to the cloud. You have options of Direct Query to a database, or Live Connection to a model or cube in SSAS.

Both Direct Query and Live Connection are Pro features, and thus your end users would also need Pro Licenses.

You can do this in a Pro "trail" to see the features work end to end.