Power BI licensing =SUM(med) up
When starting a new Power BI implementation you might have some question on licensing. Which level do I need? How do I get new licenses?
When starting a new Power BI implementation you might have some question on licensing. Which level do I need? Am I already paying for Power BI? How do I get new licenses?
The first thing that I want to clarify with this blog post is that Power BI Desktop is not a level of licensing, it is a free application that is used to pull data and build out the reports that will be published to powerbi.com. You will use Power BI Desktop to build reports regardless of if you are Free, Pro, or Premium user.
Power BI Pro License
After the reports have been built and published to powerbi.com, that is when you will need at least a Power BI Pro license. The Pro license is needed to share reports to others and to consume reports that have been shared with you. The Pro license is also needed to make app workspaces and build ad hoc reports in said app workspaces. In addition, if you are planning to use any role level security then a Pro license is needed. Power BI needs to know who is consuming the report so that it can apply the appropriate level of security.
Premium License
The higher level of license that Power BI offers is the Premium license. This license level comes with a few extra features, but the main benefit is that reports that are backed by a Premium license can be shared out and consumed by free users. This is a great feature for sharing your reports out to users that are outside of your company. The Premium license also comes with the ability to schedule incremental refreshes, and the ability to have data models over 1 GB. Both of these features become important when dealing with large datasets.
No matter what level of license your company decides to go with, Velosio is here to help. Whether you are already a client in our Stratos Cloud or new to working with Velosio we can add the licenses to your existing Office 365 tenant. Another thing to note is that if your company has an E5 license or has Dynamics for Finance and Operations licenses, then you already have a Power BI Pro license.
For any more questions about Power BI licensing or to schedule a demo, please reach out to our BI team directly.
