Power Platform Blog Series — Introduction to Power BI Licensing
The Version 1 Microsoft license consulting team (Karl O’Doherty, Niamh Ní Shúilleabháin, Richard Ojo and William Nelson) will produce a series of video chats and blogs over the next month or so on Power Platform, its components and license models.
This first post and video chat (below) from Karl O’Doherty and William Nelson, will focus on Power BI — outlining what Power BI is, the different types of users and the various licensing models.
What is Power BI?
Power BI as defined by Wikipedia.org is an ‘interactive data virtualisation software product’ focusing on Business Intelligence (BI) and sits within the Microsoft’s Power BI family of products.
The users of Power BI will normally fall into one of the 3 categories below:
· Users that build and create Power BI content, like dashboards.
· Users that consume Power BI content.
· Users who will build, create and consume content.
What are the licensing metrics contained within Power BI?
Power BI Pro — Licensed on a per user basis only, it is more suited to users who are building and consuming Power BI content. It has many of the features of the Premium level of Power BI (apart from some specific reporting, security and management features), however it is the best solution for a step up from the free version to users who need to create and consume Power BI content.
a. Where there is a need for the specific features of Power BI Pro, the key element to understand is, at a feature level, what do you need? If it is Power BI Pro only features, and there are less than 500 users that will either build or consume Power BI content (and don’t need the Premium features), at less than 500 users, this is the point in which you stay within the ‘per user’ base licensing for Power BI Pro before starting to consider stepping up between Pro to Premium (which ever flavour of Premium Licensing you choose).
Power BI Premium — ‘Premium’ you can purchase on a ‘per user’ and ‘capacity’ model.
b. ‘Per user’ on Premium with less than 250 users that require those Premium features, but at a reduced price point when compared to the Power BI Premium P level which is the capacity model.
c. Although opting for the ‘per user’ license can keep that initial cost of running the service down, there are some feature differences between capacity-based alternatives as opposed to the ‘per user’ Premium level.
d. Premium P capacity-based licensing is aimed at businesses with larger data demands, or requirements for further enhanced security.
e. From a license perspective, even if you go down the Premium P capacity-based model focused on a need to attain all the key features in Power BI, you will still need a Power BI Pro or Power BI Premium ‘per user’ license to build reports and dashboards.
Typically, we tend to see pockets of Power BI Pro usage within an estate which then tends to grow over time. It’s therefore very important that businesses and/or Public Sector establishments remember to benchmark what they are using:
· Are you on the right licensing metric? You might find that over time your usage has started to grow beyond some of the thresholds outlined above if you have gone beyond 500 users using Power BI Pro.
· Is there an opportunity to consider Power BI Premium P as an alternative, or equally as important, if you have grown your usage of Premium P on a ‘per user’ basis and are now over 250 users, is it now time to take a step back from that ‘per user’ model and look at capacity-based licensing?
The only way you can make this assessment is by knowing what you have and calculating what the cost saving would be on a per month or per annum basis. There may be some additional licensing dependencies in the form of Power BI Pro or Power BI Premium P ‘per user’ licenses to build reports and dashboards.
Power BI — Embedded Options
1. Power BI Premium Embedded — where organisations want to embed within a ‘line of business’ application or a website — not a standalone data visualisation tool. Primarily focused on delivering reports to internal business users. Annual capacity charge model — anyone who needs to construct or edit reports or create content within the embedded platform will still need a Pro license.
2. Azure Power BI Embedded — similar to Power BI Premium Embedded however targeted towards the ISV type organisation, where the sharing of information through Power BI will typically take place via apps and websites for external users. Monthly capacity charge model — anyone who needs to construct or edit reports or create content within the embedded platform will still need a Pro license.
Power BI — In Summary
This post provided a brief overview of Power BI Licensing — our next post will take a look at navigating Power Apps licensing.
Power BI usage has grown in most organisations. If you have not taken the time to review your current Power BI licensing posture, it’s well worth benchmarking your usage to iron out any potential waste or identify possible license optimisation opportunities and take advantage of cost saving opportunities that can often lay undiscovered within your estate.
Further Information
As Microsoft license experts, we are familiar with a wide range of license considerations within Microsoft Power Platform and are happy to help with any license queries you may have. Please go to our website or contact us with any questions.
About the Author:
Karl is a Principal Licensing Consultant at Version 1, providing Microsoft license expertise to organisations globally and ensuring customers get the best value from their Microsoft assets.
