Microsoft Power BI has lent itself well to the SMB space because it supports a variety of data sources, it is relatively easy to create data models and it enables simple deployment with immediate results. Its usage, at least at the beginning of a project does not require specialist BI knowledge.
If your main data source is Microsoft Dynamics ERP with thousands of available tables to store your valuable data, then the BI project rapidly becomes more
complex.
There are limitations of Power BI that we should consider:
- Power BI Performance on larger data sets is a known issue and the new Managing Aggregations feature may not be the right answer for companies who are used to analyzing data at a document level.
- Modeling hundreds of tables is possible in Microsoft Power BI, but is not easy to manage, even when using the new ‘Modelling Views’ feature, and while the new “dataflows’ the feature helps in reducing redundancy in modeling, it does require additional services.
ALL OF THESE LIMITATIONS ARE VERY WELL SUPPORTED BY A DATA WAREHOUSE.
Microsoft Power BI Advantages
- Constantly developed tool has the following great features:
- Creating data models is simple (not many tables, not large amounts of data) modeling can be done without specific BI skills.
- Can connect to many data source and transform entry data in a simple way.
- Language for extending table features (DAX) is easy to learn.
- Very affordable license.
Microsoft Power BI Threats
- By adding some new features (data flows, aggregations, data views) it requires more
and more knowledge to manage.
