Every organization is overloaded with data and challenged to turn that data into the best decisions possible. Power BI is an interactive business intelligence tool that allows any user to build powerful reports and dashboards to provide valuable insights into their data.
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Using these insights everyone can then make more informed business decisions. Having the best data can mean seeing market trends before they emerge, spotting issues with manufacturing faster, or selling more of their own solution by building in Power BI into their own product offerings.
Microsoft has a number of different options for Power BI and how it is deployed and licensed.
Power BI Desktop
Power BI Desktop is a complete data analysis tool that allows for advanced report creation. This software is installed directly on your local desktop, where there is more functionality available than inside of the Power BI Service. Power BI Desktop allows you to connect to many data sources, transform that data, as well as create calculated columns and measures for the data that you pull in. Once you have your report created, you can publish it to the Power BI Service, where licensing dictates who it can be shared with.