Power BI

Power BI is Microsoft's business intelligence platform. It enables data from hundreds of sources to be connected, modelled, and visualised.

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Core concept

Self-service BI: business users can create reports without deep programming knowledge. Through integration with Excel and Microsoft 365, Power BI fits organisations with Microsoft-adjacent reporting.

Assessment

• Use case: Management reporting, financial controlling, and operational dashboards.
• Advantage: Tight integration with the Microsoft ecosystem, high performance with large data volumes, and established licensing models.
• Limitation: Modelling complex data (DAX language) requires specialist knowledge; the desktop version is only available for Windows.

Related topics

• Data Architecture, the data architecture context for Power BI.
• Microsoft 365, the service comparison point for Power BI.