Microsoft Power BI Premium: endless possibilities for your teams

By: Bertil Bor, Sr. Consultant Business Analytics at delaware

With Microsoft Power BI you can quickly turn data into actionable insights. The Pro license of this powerful analytics solution is a standard part of Microsoft 365 or is available separately for €8.40 per user, per month. The smart integration with Microsoft 365 makes the solution very accessible and also ensures that Power BI is embraced by more and more organizations.

Per user, per month

Until recently, if you wanted more functionality, more performance, and more control, you needed Microsoft Power BI Premium. But in order to work with this Premium license, you were forced to take it all (Premium per Capacity, PPC). Such a plan costs 4,200 euros and allows you to work with 500 up to approx. 1500 users. Although this is an interesting model for large companies with hundreds of users, but out of reach for smaller companies. Microsoft has now closed that gap.

Besides, it is now also possible to purchase Microsoft Power BI Premium per month, per user (PPU). For only €16.90 per user, you get access to all kinds of interesting features. It is also possible to mix multiple subscriptions. For example, you could choose to let some people work with a Premium account and give the rest of your organization only a Pro account. Please note: PRO users will not be able to use the Premium functionalities.

Three benefits of Power BI Premium

Your Premium users benefit from all kinds of new, useful features. I have listed the most important themes for you.

1. Create, print and share better reports
   You quickly associate Business Intelligence with slick dashboards in a digital environment. Yet that is only partly true. Many people still value a tangible, printed report that they can submit to their director. With Premium, producing pixel perfect reports like this is no longer a problem. You can quickly and easily assemble such reports in a sleek layout, complete with your logo and in your corporate identity on A4 size. You then send the result as a PDF or print it out. For the experts: it is the “old school” SSRS feature that is now available within the Power BI platform.
2. Get started quickly with artificial intelligence
   Power BI Premium offers Automated Machine Learning (AML). You indicate in advance what you want to analyze or predict. AML then determines which algorithm is the most suitable. AML will also optimize that algorithm. Of course, the results depend on the quality and quantity of the data you provide. Nevertheless, this AML approach already gives a very good indication of whether your data is suitable for a prediction at all. This offers a low threshold for 'not die-hard' data scientists to explore the possibilities and make a first move towards a prediction model. Are you satisfied? Then you will then refine the model with the help of a real data scientist.
3. Develop structured dashboards and reports
   Power BI is very accessible. Just as accessible as Excel. This also means that different people in the organization can come up with their dashboards and reports. Before you know it, there will be proliferation and you no longer have control over everything that happens in the reporting area.
   Power BI Premium users have access to a Deployment Pipeline, a Power BI ‘’DevOps Lite’’ solution, that allows you to develop, test, and publish new dashboards or reports in a very structured way. Especially with larger projects, it is nice to be able to work in this way and to make the correct report versions available in the right way in a very controlled manner.

These are just three examples of interesting Premium features. Other examples of new features include Data Flows, XMLA endpoints, more data volume and higher data refresh frequency. There are also differences between Premium per User (PPU) and Premium per Capacity (PPC). For example, a key difference is that with PPC you have dedicated server capacity. With PPU, you share that capacity with other organizations. In addition, PPC has (even) more security features.

Go Premium

Investing in Microsoft Power BI Premium is worth it. The Premium subscription gives you all kinds of beautiful, new possibilities.

Whether Microsoft Power BI Premium is interesting for your organization depends entirely on your specific situation. Our BI specialists are happy to help you devise, roll out, secure and manage your BI environment. You have also come to the right place when it comes to combinations of Power BI with datawarehouse hosting on Azure or complex integrations with SAP.

Try Premium for yourself

Getting started with Power BI Premium is easy. Via the Power BI website of Microsoft, you can easily research what the Premium variant has to offer. With the push of a button, you can get started with Power BI Premium with a 30-day free trial. You are not committed to anything. Don't like it? Then you can easily switch back to the old plan.