Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft is ubiquitous in the Financial Services Sector and many other industries; the world runs on MS Excel and many organization simply choose to extend their Microsoft Enterprise License Agreement to include MS SQL, SSRS, SSAS, SharePoint, PowerBI, etc. With a broad spectrum of software, and the right technical expertise and capital investment, there is little that you cannot do with the Microsoft Platform.

Having worked with the Microsoft BI platform and tools from 2007 - 2014, my feedback is as follows: Requires high degree of technical/development expertise. PowerBI is too technical to enable business users to "fish for themselves."\ Solution deployed on SharePoint requires additional licensing and technical/administrative expertise. User security in SharePoint is complex/cumbersome to setup, maintain and audit. There are many hidden costs of deploying and maintaining PowerBI: a) SQL Server Licensing Costs ($$$ per CPU/Core) b) Microsoft Operation System Licensing Costs ($$$ per CPU) c) Enterprise SharePoint Licensing Costs ($$$ per License) d) External access requires CAL licensing scheme for SQL Server/SharePoint e) "Keep the lights on" IT Staffing costs for: i) Database Administrators ii) Windows Server Engineers iii) SharePoint Administrators iv) BI/SQL Developers f) Additional MS licenses/hardware for a DMZ environment if external/non-VPN access is needed for mobile users g) Time to Market to implement is lengthy h) Data Connector library is limited compared to other BI platforms (like Domo) I) Because end-users cannot easily leverage the platform to "fish for them selves", the BI Development team will have limited resources to meet the BI needs of the business.

The Microsoft PowerBI platform may seem like a natural evolution for companies already drinking the proverbial Microsoft Koolaid. However, in my experience, there are many hidden costs to implement and maintain the environment, and the platform requires significant technical expertise on the back-end and to create dashboards/tiles. The technology appears to be a rewrite/extension of the legacy Microsoft PerformancePoint running on SharePoint with a "WIndows 8" Tile-scheme/look-and-feel and the UX could be greatly improved. At the end of the day, time to market to deliver business value is extremely long and the total cost of ownership is untenable.