Power BI is built around three core components: data sets, which contain all of the raw information a user brings into Power BI reports, which organize that data into a set of charts and graphs and dashboards, which are single live-updating pages that provide an at-a-glance look at specific visualizations based on those reports.
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| Image courtesy: powerbi.microsoft.com |
This product has a competition with Tableau which also offers data visualization tools on a software-as-a-service model. People can try Power BI for free by signing up with their business email address and using the services free tier, which caps its data capacity at 1GB per user and only allows them to refresh their data daily. A Power BI Pro subscription costs $9.99 per user per month, and ups the services data capacity to 10GB per user and adds support for hourly refresh along with a bunch of other benefits.
"Data is increasingly streaming from everything. With Power BI you can monitor streaming data sources via live, continuously updating visuals. Maintain an up-to-the-moment pulse on your business. Legacy business intelligence solutions are largely retrospective and of course Power BI also provides rich and deep analysis of historical data like other BI solutions. But you wouldn’t want to drive your car looking only at your rear-view mirror. You shouldn’t drive your business that way either.
Over 500,000 unique users from 45,000 companies across 185 countries helped shape the new Power BI." as mentioned on Microsoft’s Blog.