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PowerBI now GA | Intro & Resources
Power BI for Office 365 is now Generally Available, which is a cloud-based Business Intelligence service that gives people a powerful new way to work with data in the tools they use every day, Excel and Office 365. You can experience both Self-Service BI and Online Services by using Excel and Power BI for Office 365. Power BI delivers a new way to Integrate, Transform and Exploit data through Excel as well as new opportunities to access, Share and Search through Office 365. Power BI is a solution of a Workstation with Excel part and “App”, as well as an Online game with Office 365.
Power BI for Office 365 Overview
In my [previous] blog post I demonstrated the capabilities of Power BI Components by showing their Videos. Here in this post I’ll provide the Resources to setup Power BI environment for you.
>> To start you can Sign up for a Free Trial of Power BI for Office 365 on this site: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/powerbi/default.aspx#fbid=v0V8xzuZXJR
>> Download components of Power BI integrated into Excel:
1. Power Query
2. Power Pivot
3. Power View
4. Power Map (formerly Geoflow )
5. Power BI Mobile App (or Mobile BI).
>> Online Components in Office 365:
7. Power Q&A
8. Data Management and Data Stewardship
As part of the Power BI trial you’ll also receive a free 30 day trial of Office 365 ProPlus giving you access to the latest version of Excel. Once you have Excel installed, download and install the Power Query and Power Map add-ins for Excel and learn about the new features with the getting started guide.
>> Power BI Offering Options:
1. Power BI, Add-on for E3/E4 Subscribers
2. Power BI, Standalone
3. Power BI, Standalone + Office 365 ProPlus
Check following link for “Power BI” current pricing: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/powerBI/pricing.aspx?WT.mc_id=blog_PBI_GA_PBI#fbid=v0V8xzuZXJR
Power BI for Office 365 | Self Service BI in Excel
Microsoft Power BI for Office 365 is a collection of features and services that enable you to Visualize data, share Discoveries, and Collaborate in intuitive new ways. Microsoft Power BI for Office 365 provides an Organization-wide Self-service Business Intelligence (BI) infrastructure, and brings Excel workbook sharing, Online collaboration, and IT infrastructure together into a holistic offering.
Power BI consists of many features and services, and works seamlessly with Excel. Use Excel to create compelling content, data models, and visualizations, and then use Power BI to share, collaborate, and extend those insights
>> Self-Service BI Features in Excel: these features extend the data-specific features and capabilities of Excel 2013:
1. Power Query – Discover: easily discover and connect to data from public and corporate data sources
2. Power Pivot – Analyze: create a sophisticated Data Model directly in Excel
3. Power View – Visualize: create reports and analytical views with interactive data visualizations
4. Power Map – Visualize: explore and navigate geospatial data on a 3D map experience in Excel
>> Power BI for Office 365: these features amplify the self-service BI capabilities created in Excel by making them available in a collaborative online environment:
5. Power BI Sites – Share Data & Insights: Share, View, and Interact with reports in these collaborative Power BI sites
6. Power BI Q&A – Get Answers: use natural language queries to find, explore, and report over your data
7. Query and Data Management – share and manage queries and data sources, and view query usage analytics
8. Power BI Windows Store App – Access Data Anywhere: view reports on the go, with the Power BI app
>> IT Infrastructure Services for Power BI: these features get Power BI running in your organization, and enable IT professionals to provide, manage, and secure Power BI services:
9. Provision Power BI for Office 365 – create a tenant, and get Power BI for your organization
10. Power BI Admin Center – manage your organization’s Power BI infrastructure from a site
11. Data Management Gateway – connect on-premises data to the cloud, seamlessly and securely
Power BI Provisioning Guide: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=317870
Power BI Getting Started Guide: http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/office365-sharepoint-online-enterprise-help/redir/HA104103589.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA104103581
Power BI MSDN Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powerbi/
SQL Server 2012 (a.k.a. Denali) | The Fantastic 12 of 2012
SQL Server team has come up with a new series to promote its new product and create awareness among techies about what SQL Server 2012 is capable of and what new features it comes packed with. Check out the full series of The Fantastic 12 of SQL Server 2012 here.
The above link will provide you direct access to the technet blogs with detailed info on all 12 topics and videos.
The series will talk about 12 new features, which are as follows:
1. Required 9s Data Protection:
– Always On
– New support for Windows Server Core
2. Blazing-Fast Performance:
– New ColumnStore Index, [video]
– Improved Full Text Search
– Good Compression capabilities.
3. Organizational Security and Compliance:
– Data Protection (Encryption and Compression)
– Control Access (User-Defined Server Roles, Default Schema for Groups, Contained Database Authentication and Active Directory)
– Ensure Compliance (SQL Server Audit and Policy-Based Management)
4. Peace of Mind:
– Product Enhancements (Distributed Replay, System Center Alignment, System Center Advisor and No-fee Service Packs)
– Free Planning Tools
– Tailored Support and Licensing Programs (Mission Critical Support and Enrollment for Application Platform)
5. Rapid Data Exploration & Visualization:
– Self-Service Analytics (Power Pivot)
– Stunning, interactive data visualization (Power View)
6. Managed Self-Service BI:
– Gain insight and oversight (Power Pivot for SharePoint)
– Enable IT Efficiency (End user created, IT managed, Ease of administration through SharePoint and SQL Azure Reporting)
7. Credible, Consistent Data:
– BI Semantic Model
– Integration Services
– Data Quality Services
– Master Data Services
8. Scalable Analytics & Data Warehousing:
– Flexibility and Choice (Hardware and deployment options and Optimized Solutions)
– Massive Scale at Low Cost (Built-in Functionality, Support for Powerful Hardware and Parallel Data Warehouse)
– Complete BI Solution (Scalable OLAP)
9. Scale On Demand:
– Self-service Deployments
– SQL Azure Federation
– Contained Databases
– License Mobility
– Data Sync
10. Fast Time To Solution:
– Optimized Transaction processing and data warehousing
– Complete solutions co-engineered with hardware partners
– Agile to market from weeks and months to days
11. Optimized Productivity:
– SQL Server Data Tools
– T-SQL Enhancements
– Common tools
– SQL Server Management Studio
12. Extend Any Data, Anywhere:
– Support for Any Data
– Statistical Semantic Full-Text Search
– OData
– SQL Azure DataMarket
– Enhanced interop support
This “Fantastic 12” feature list is also available for download, and the PDF is here.
Check out the Webcast/Videos for all these 12 features, here.
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