Microsoft Power BI Reviews

I work in fraud analytics in the insurance industry and use Power BI for broader and high-level reports. We also do some fraud detection, and our output is sent to a Power BI dashboard for various clients to see. It's basically our visualization tool organization-wide.

The most valuable feature is the infinite possibilities when it comes to visualizations. If a particular visualization is not available as a default or in the market, you can just load in a Python nr script and get a visualization from that. It's very flexible in that respect and opens up a plethora of opportunities. The huge number of connectors that are available is also a big advantage - BI can connect to various things, even competitors like Google's Data Studio, and it is even able to connect to various Google data sources and be a powerful alternative to Data Studio. It's also a data modeling tool, so it keeps everything within the app, which is really convenient, allowing the pipeline to complete itself in a more fluid way.

In the next release, I would like Microsoft to include some inbuilt machine learning so that it becomes point-and-click, rather than us developing models out of API and BI connecting to that and getting the results. That process gets in the way of continuity.

I've been using this solution for two years.

Power BI's stability has improved in the last few years and now seems pretty good, especially with R.

I don't know if BI is directly scalable, but we used a lot of aggregated marks in order to make sure it is able to work with a huge number of roles in the data set. Microsoft demonstrated that they were able to achieve up to one trillion rows, and we haven't got there, but we did get close.

Previously we used Excel, which took a long time - two or three weeks - to bring the data into a uniform format, whereas BI can do the same job in a day.

If you're on Azure, Power BI is tightly integrated with many of the products. And even if you have a non-Azure solution, the family of connectors for data sources is wide, so you can fit it in many places. I would rate BI as nine out of ten.

We use Power BI in cloud solutions in other systems. There are lots of products in our environment that work with Power BI. One use case is we use it to track the real-time sensor data to Power BI using Azure.

We have lots of customers. We make premium subscription projects for them. We have a Tableau portion. We are also Tableau partners and resellers. As a company, we make lots of Tableau projects. 

The most powerful site of Power BI is the cloud site. You can do everything in power BI. There are lots of things that the solution provides. If you have a huge data warehouse in the cloud, Power BI fits. 

In some cases, there are some add-ons that you can put together in Power BI - for example, data factory, data bricks, and also data lakes. Some Microsoft solutions work together and are integrated already. You don't need to worry about that.  

If you know what you do, Power BI is a good solution.

The solution is stable. 

The product can scale. 

There are some limitations of Power BI. The front end, for example, is not fancy.

The solution should not be used in some cases. 

The cost of the solution can get high.

There is a strong community around the solution that can help users learn about the product and troubleshoot.

When we compare Power BI with other solutions, we can see there are lots of things that should be done. Some things are there, however, they are not working well. Microsoft puts lots of solutions in one place and declares it a complete solution. However, in the practice, you can see that this STK is not working properly or the request is not giving the same results. You discover that when you open a ticket to Microsoft. They will tell you that they are still in development on that product so it will available in the future. 

When you use the Power BI as an enterprise solution, as a consultant, you find out that the product is not fully ready for enterprise. In that way, we suffer a lot. That said,  every version becomes better.

They need to have an analytics suite of some sort.

I've been working with BI solutions for 20 years. I've been using Power BI for two years so far.

The product is stable. For one of our customers, there are one thousand clients connecting to the same report. Everyone gets their own results and can search them. It needs more power. It can consume a lot of energy. 

The scalability of the product is great. It's on the cloud, which makes it easy to scale. 

There are good communities and groups that can help you troubleshoot if necessary.

I'm also familiar with Tableau.

We are SAP partners and resellers also. We make lots of SAP business intelligence solutions and do business intelligence projects.

Step-by-step implementation is easy. The difficult part is when you enter the infrastructure site. There are lots of Power BI developers, however, they do not know the other cloud environment. In that way, they can only design the front site. That said, they should know the architecture. They should know the other infrastructure and know the data also. If they do, they can produce lots of things. As an example, Microsoft offers a flow integration so that you can create a data flow that consumes the data and give the results to other services. Also, there are lots of things that you can do, however, you need to know the Azure environment in order to do them. 

In some cases, Power BI can be expensive.

We are using the current version of the solution.

I'd advise new users that there are lots of communities and lots of user groups that deal with the product. They should attend them. They should watch the videos about Power BI. It's important to extend your knowledge. If you want to be a Power BI developer, you should also know the other technologies as well.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We are implementing it for dashboard presentation. For example, one of our customers is in the energy sector. Another one is in the government sector, so it's dashboards mainly.

The ability to create dashboard presentations for various sectors is a valuable feature. It's an excellent product.

We would like it if they added more Python libraries in the Power BI service. For Power BI service right now, you can use Python, but it is limited to a few libraries or a few packages from Python. Other than that, it's an excellent product.

Another area that could be improved is maybe more extensions or more visuals.

I have been working with Power BI for four or five years. I am working with the latest version. It's a monthly release.

The solution is stable.

Microsoft BI is scalable.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.

For someone who is looking into implementing this product, my advice is to check between the two versions because Microsoft Power BI is not one solution. You have one solution which is coming with SQL services on-prem and you have the cloud solution. You need to check because there are differences in the features. Anyone who is implementing Power BI needs to be careful on which platform they're using: on-premise or on the cloud. There is a difference in the features between the two solutions.

We use Microsoft BI for dashboards and monitoring tools and dashboards. We mostly use it to produce charts and graphs for our customers.

The solution is easy to use and charts can be built quickly with the tools.

The solution could improve by having more attractive graphical charts.

I have been using Microsoft BI for two and a half years.

Microsoft BI has been stable in my usage.

The scalability of Microsoft BI is good.

We have approximately 2,000 users using this solution.

The technical support is very good, they have been available when we needed them.

The installation is straightforward.

My advice to others would be to compare Microsoft BI to all the other similar solutions and see what fits their use case best. If they're looking for nice looking charts then perhaps, they should compare this solution to the others. If you are looking for a solution that is easy to use and quick to learn then Microsoft BI could be the right fit.

I rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

The primary use cases for Microsoft BI are typical for business intelligence, including operational monitoring and KPI tracking.

Microsoft BI is easy to use and simple.

The user interface could be a bit more intuitive. Some parts of the user interface could be a bit more intuitive so that it's a bit easier to use.

I have been using Microsoft BI for the past four years.

Microsoft BI is stable. 

Microsoft BI is fairly scalable.

I have not really had to contact Microsoft BI. I think my use cases so far have been pretty simple so I did not feel the need to interact with them.

The initial setup takes only a few minutes. It's just a matter of downloading the file and installing it.

Once it is installed, it takes minimal involvement from a maintenance perspective. It runs on its own.

We deployed Microsoft BI in-house. We did not need a vendor team to come in. 

We are not paying any licensing fees for our current Microsoft BI setup. The version that we are using is free of cost unless you wish to deploy it on a server; that is where the cost component comes in.

I recommend Microsoft BI. 

Power BI is more powerful than other tools because it is new for us. Each new version has more capabilities, and we're expecting AI and ML features in the next version.

Power BI's administration could use some work, and the user experience needs to improve because it is a client-based tool. If you want to generate a model or report, you need to use client tools, but client tools are limited for end-users who don't have enough hardware. For example, maybe a client lacks enough memory or CPU power for report generators. If you use a model that requires a massive amount of data, your client will face several problems.

We are using an embedded BI because we are using it to report a portal, and this portal includes some screens that come from Power BI, so the embedded BI needs to improve. It would also be helpful if Microsoft made AI and ML capabilities available for private cloud users.

We have been using Power BI for about one year.

Power BI is stable. 

Power BI has limited scalability. The modeling area needs to improve in this regard. 

We have a limited license, but if we use more time or have more reports, usage, and concurrency, then the license cost will go up.

I rate Microsoft BI eight out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution internally and also on our websites.

The interface is great.

The DAX function center and integration with Asia have been great. 

It's a powerful platform.

The product is robust and stable. 

You do not have to maintain the product. It's very low-maintenance.

Technical support is helpful. 

I can't speak to any missing features. It has everything we need.

The reporting could be a bit better. It would be nice if there was just a bit more flexibility.

The solution is stable and reliable. The performance is good. It's not a product that crashes or freezes. There aren't bugs or glitches to deal with.

It's robust.

We've never attempted to scale. I'm not sure what the process is like. I can't speak to if it's easy or difficult to do.

We have five people in our department that directly use Microsoft BI. They are professors. 

While it is currently being used extensively, I cannot say that we have plans to increase usage. 

We've been in touch with technical support in the past. They've always been good and we are quite happy with the level of support that they offer us.

I have experience with IBM Cognos products before Power BI. It's very difficult to compare products as there are so many different functional, decent products.

I didn't handle the deployment process. I can't speak to what the deployment was like. 

The is no maintenance required. 

I'm not sure if we used consultants or integrators. I cannot recall what the process was like. 

I can't speak to the licensing. I don't have any information related to the exact costs.

We have looked at, for example, Tableau and QlikUp. At the moment, Power BI just seems to fit our needs the best.

We are just a customer and an end-user.

I'd advise people to use it, know their needs and understand what they want. Do the personal work well and make sure that Power BI is the right suite for your needs. It's important to do some research before jumping in. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

My primary use case is to turn data into analysis.

Areas for improvement would be the construction of reports and the dashboard budget.

The stability is good.

Technical support is good.

The initial setup was complex.

Licenses are available on a monthly basis.

I would rate this solution as nine out of ten.