Why Power BI?

As we learned in the previous section of Power BI tutorial that, Power BI is an umbrella term having several different kinds of services under its tutelage.

  1. There is a cloud-based BI service called Power BI Services used to view and share dashboards.

  2. A desktop-based reporting interface known as Power BI Desktop.

  3. Another useful service is Power BI Embedded that runs on an Azure cloud platform and we can use it for report creation, ETL and data analysis.

Further, let us discuss a few points regarding why Power BI is an important tool in today’s time and why do we need it.

  • Real-time analysis in Power BI can be done by establishing direct connections to the data sources. Also, it keeps data updated to the latest second by data refreshing.

  • You can use custom visualizations from a custom visuals gallery. Custom visuals are divided into many options and categories.

  • You can quickly search for important insights and datasets within your data by using the Quick Insights option.

  • Establish a live or non-live connection to on-premises data sources like SQL Server, and use a secure channel to access data through data gateways. This makes Power BI enterprise-ready as on-premises connections make data transfer secure and the technology scalable and reliable.

  • You can connect to other services through Power BI such as SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), Microsoft Excel, etc.

  • Power BI is a new age software using the latest technologies such as HTML 5.0, column store databases, cloud computing, mobile apps, etc. This helps in keeping Power BI on the top and popular as it is constantly getting updated with the latest features.