Power BI business intelligence service will be updated on July 24 and will replace the current Power BI for Office 365 operation alongside with tool for the new version Power BI Desktop or formerly known as Power BI Designer.
The new Power BI version does not need an Office 365 subscription, Techno stream reported. Users can access it from either the free Power BI apps being built or from inside a browser.
Those using the current Power BI Windows app will have to replace it by an updated one though the current app will still be accessible for those who require it, ZDNet reported.
Meanwhile, it is reported that there are two tiers of service: A free version and a paid, $9.99 per month/user one. This chart provides detailed differences between the two tiers; focusing on data refresh rates and cooperation aptitudes.
James Phillips, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's BI Product group, said that the principle behind the new version is to help business users to gain from business intelligence and analytics without requiring analysts or other intermediaries to develop or model the service and data.
According to Phillips, for the past six months that the updated Power BI service has been in public preview, 45,000 corporations in 180 nations signed up to try it.
"This is a viable service. It is not obsolete," Phillip confirmed.
"The new service is created to be a hybrid so that users can decide to leave data into their data centers but utilize the data in collaboration with Power BI. Users can easily edit the data into diverse "faces" to suit their needs," Phillips added.