Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella announced in his Convergence data culture keynote session this morning that Power BI Preview is now available globally in 140 markets. This includes the new native mobile BI apps. He also shared additional, popular data sources that will be in the Power BI Preview soon including Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, Google Analytics, Zuora, Acumatica, and Twilio. Today, anyone with a business email account can experience the preview of the new Power BI for free.
Nadella urged businesses to embrace a data culture in all parts of their organizations. Adopting a data culture starts with making information easily accessible to all. He showcased a Power BI Preview dashboard that is being used today with big data sources to track Windows 10 feedback scores around the world.
Power BI allows anyone to keep a pulse on their organization by bringing all their data together and monitoring it through a single pane of glass. Live Power BI dashboards support streaming data and reports from both on-premises Analysis Services Tabular models and a variety of other data sources in the cloud. They hybrid BI architecture enables consolidated insights regardless of where the data resides. Hybrid BI solutions are a growing trend as data gravity shifts to the cloud with most data still residing on premises today.
Modern HTML5 Analytics Platform
The Power BI Preview showcases mobile-friendly, touch enabled, HTML5 dashboards and reports. Report viewing, authoring and Q&A natural language querying are all available right within the web browser. The preview today currently supports both Chrome and Internet Explorer browsers.
Other key points regarding the recent Power BI Preview include:
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Real-time and automated dashboard support
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Natural language query for ad-hoc insight, anytime, anywhere
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Additional data sources announced include Analysis Services, Google Analytics, Dynamics, Salesforce, Marketo, Intuit QuickBooks, Sage, Sumo Logic, Visual Studio and several other SaaS offerings
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Hybrid data connectivity to on-premises data without having to copy your data to the cloud
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New free desktop Power Designer (32-bit, 64-bit) for Power BI content authoring
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More data visualization types including combination charts, thematic maps, funnels, gauges and more
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Native Mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows phones and tablets with data-driven alerting
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Developer APIs for extending the platform
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