Tag: Premium

Introducing the new Power BI Premium “Gen-2” Architecture

Introducing the new Power BI Premium “Gen-2” Architecture

Published September 23, 2020

At Microsoft Ignite this week, the Power BI team unveiled the next generation of the architecture for their “dedicated capacity” customers. This architecture promises to resolve many of the issues experienced with the first generation of Premium, and opens up several possibilities moving forward.

Gen-1

The Power BI dedicated capacity SKUs (which include Premium) were introduced 3 years ago in order to provide a scalable pricing model, and to provide predictable performance. Unlike the Pro SKU, which is licensed per user, these SKUs represent specific sets of resources running in Azure. There are currently 3 SKUs in this category, the A SKU (purchased hourly from Azure, the EM SKU (for embedding), and the well know P or Premium SKU.

When an organization purchases one of these SKUs, they are essentially purchasing memory, CPU cores and storage. The isolation allows for predictability, but it also means that when the resources become over allocated, catastrophic errors can occur. Refreshing a data set can also be particularly memory intensive, and the memory usage during a refresh could increase by more than double what might be normally required. This has an impact on normal operations during refresh, and means that capacity need to be over-sized to accommodate refresh in some cases.

Once acquired, Gen-1 capacities need to be configured, and decisions made as to what services to allow, and how many resources to allocate to them. It’s not always obvious as to what those settings should be. I’ve also seen situations where an overzealous administrator gets so excited about the new Premium capacity that they assign hundreds of workspaces to it, and bring reports to their knees.

Gen-2 – A Different Approach

The new “Gen-2” architecture aims to deliver the isolation and predictability that dedicated capacity brings, without the drawbacks. Gen-2 is in fact, not dedicated, as resources are drawn from a massive pool as needed. However, the performance level is guaranteed, and is focused on CPU cycles. In fact, memory is not even a consideration, apart from per-dataset overall size limits.

Memory will be allocated as needed to refreshes, ending the need to worry about refreshes failing, or impacting end user experiences. The CPU charge for refreshes will be allocated immediately, but the usage allocation will be spread out throughout the day. This provides consistent fast performance without requiring resource overallocation to handle peaks due to resourcing. Memory is no longer a factor whatsoever for refresh.

This architecture also allows for automatic scale up/down for intensive or unpredictable workloads. Administrators will no longer need to make so many decisions up front, or react to changes as frequently. If autoscale is not enabled, queries can potentially be slowed down, but a refresh kicking off can no longer make reports unavailable. The new architecture is moving back to a SaaS model, after being rather close to IaaS with Gen 1

In the past, services that required full isolation like Paginated reports were not available on some of the lower end A and EM SKUs. With this new architecture, they will be available on all of them. In fact, with the newly announced Premium per user SKU, they will even be available on a per user basis.

This new architecture will be available to all of the “dedicated” SKUs, A, EM and P. The preview of the new P SKU will begin later in 2020. As an ISV, I am particularly interested in this new architecture for the A SKUs. The memory spikes caused by large refreshes have been particularly problematic for us in the past. Gen-2 architecture appears to be just what the doctor ordered.

I have often referred to this group of SKUs as the dedicated capacity SKUs in the past, but with this change, that term is no longer accurate. With the term Premium being so pervasive, I think we’ll just have to call them all Premium SKUs, whether they are P or otherwise.

Power BI Announces Premium-per-User licensing

Published September 22, 2020

The license for the rest of us

Today at Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft announced the upcoming availability of a new licensing model for Premium features in Power BI entitled “Premium per User”. With this model, individual users, or subsets of users can subscribe to most of the capabilities of Power BI Premium for an additional monthly fee.

For a preliminary FAQ about this new license, read this official blog post from the Power BI team.

Three years ago, Microsoft introduced the capacity based Premium license. Prior to this, the only license available for Power BI was the user based Pro license, which listed at $10 per user per month. The problem with this model was that large organizations found it to be prohibitively expensive, especially for casual user. The capacity based SKUs (Premium) had the effect of solving that problem. An organization could purchase their own dedicated resources and then allocate them in any way they saw fit. Report consumers do not need a Pro license with this model.

While Premium went a long way to solve the cost problem with large organizations, it introduced a significant new issue with smaller to mid sized organizations. The problem is the price tag. The entry level Premium SKU (P1) carries a list price of $5,000 US per month. This means that an organization needs to have more that 500 regular Power BI users before the cost of Premium starts to make sense from a sharing only perspective.

Compounding the price tag issue, since the release of Premium, more and more features have been released that require it to function. Features like Paginated reports, AI capabilities, deployment pipelines, and the XMLA endpoint all require Premium. A small organization may have the need for this type of feature, but cannot justify the spend of a Premium license.

The new Premium per user (PPU) license promises to solve this problem. Premium per user will be a new license that will include all of the capabilities of the Pro license, but will also include almost all of the features available in Premium. Details about which features are available can be found here. It will NOT include unlimited sharing. Users with this license will be able to publish content to a PPU workspace, and that content can be consumed by other users that have a PPU license.

The next question is of course going to be “great, so how much is it?”. Therein lies the rub. Microsoft is not saying, at least not at this point. From the official blog post announcing the PPU license, Microsoft says:

“Stay tuned for the official pricing announcement as we get closer to the GA timeframe. I guarantee you won’t want to miss it“
Arun Ulag, Corporate Vice President, Power BI

It does seem awfully odd to announce a new license without stating the price, but that’s the situation that stands today. However, given that the goal of this SKU is clearly to make Premium features more accessible across the board, I fully expect it to be quite reasonable.

If, as I expect, the price is reasonable, the PPU license will unlock a lot of doors, making Premium far more widely available. In fact, I expect that PPU will become the go-to license generally. Now, we simply have to wait for the price, before we get too excited.

Understanding the Power BI Capacity Based SKUs

Published September 26, 2017

Power BI licensing has changed again. This week at Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft introduced a new capacity based SKU for Power BI Embedded, intended for ISVs and developers: The A SKU. This brings the number of capacity based SKUs to 3, with each category having numerous sub categories. This means that there are a number of ways to embed content by using Power BI Pro, Power BI Embedded, or Power BI Premium. The trick is to know what will be needed for what circumstances. This post will attempt to help with the distinctions.

The SKUs are additive in nature, with A (Power BI Embedded) providing a set of APIs for developers, EM (Power BI Premium) additional ad-hoc embedding features for organizations, and P (Power BI Premium)providing a SaaS application that contains everything that the Power BI service offers. For some background, the EM SKU was initially introduced to serve the needs of both Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and of organizations that needed to do some simple sharing within the organization, and give them access to the latest Power BI features. However, ISVs have a different business model than enterprises, which is why the A series was introduced.

Power BI Embedded A SKUs

The A SKU (A is for Azure) is a Platform-as-a-Service and set of APIs for those ISVs who are developing an application to take to market. These ISVs choose to use Power BI as the data visualization layer of that application to add value to their own application. As such, Power BI assets contained in Power BI Embedded capacities cannot be accessed by a licensed Power BI user, but are only accessed by customers of the ISV’s application.

Power BI Embedded capacity is billed hourly, can be purchased hourly, and can be paused – meaning no long-term commitments to a specific capacity. This pausing capability is critical for small ISVs that don’t yet have the revenue stream to support monthly commitments, and it addressed one of my largest concerns over moving Power BI Embedded over to the Premium model. Power BI Embedded is purchased through Microsoft Azure. Additionally, Power BI Embedded can scale up and down as needed to accommodate the requirements of the ISV business model as the vendor’s application grows.

Running the entry level A1 capacity for a full month equates to approximately $750/month, so while the capacity of the Power BI Embedded A1 SKU is equivalent to the Power BI Premium EM SKU, ISVs pay a slightly higher effective monthly price for the flexibility mentioned above.

There are 6 sizes of Power BI Embedded available, each capacity mapping to an existing Power BI Premium capacity so ISVs can grow their business as needed. Pricing starts at about $1/hour:

Name	Virtual cores	Memory (GB)	Peak renders/hour	Cost/hour
A1	1	3	300	~$1
A2	2	5	600	~$2
A3	4	10	1,200	~$4
A4	8	25	2,400	~$8
A5	16	50	4,800	~$16
A6	32	100	9,600	~$32

Power BI Premium EM SKUs

The EM SKU (EM is for embedding – NOT Embedded) covers off everything contained in the Power BI Embedded A SKU, but also offers the ability to share Power BI reports within an organization through content embedding. Currently, this can be accomplished through the use of the SharePoint Power BI web part for modern pages, or the through tabs using Microsoft Teams.

There are three EM SKUs, and while the largest, EM3, can be purchased through Office 365 monthly, the smaller 2 (EM1 and EM2) must be purchased through Volume Licensing. Volume licensing represents an annual commitment, and may be an incentive for ISVs to remain on the A SKU even if they are not pausing their service. EM SKUs cannot be paused – a month is the smallest available billing unit. Additionally, scaling on EM SKUs requires that you retain your monthly or annual commitment to the initial SKU purchased until the end of the contract term.

Details on the EM SKUs are below:

Name	Virtual cores	Memory (GB)	Peak renders/hr	Cost
EM1	1	3	1-300	$625/mo
EM2	2	5	301-600	$1,245/mo
EM3	4	10	601-1,200	$2,495/mo

Power BI Premium P SKUs

The P SKU (P is for Premium, but it helps to think of it as “Power BI Service”) is the “all in” version of Power BI licensed through capacity. It offers everything that is available with Power BI, which includes everything available in the A and EM SKUs. It also offers the ability to share Power BI assets in the Power BI service through apps, or if personal workspaces are in a Premium capacity, through dashboard sharing.

The entry point of the P SKU is significantly higher than EM as well, but you’re getting a business application vs a set of APIs. It also comes with significantly more resources attached to it. For example, P1 comes with 8 virtual cores and 25 GB of RAM, whereas the largest EM offering is EM3, with 4 cores and 10 GB RAM.

All the P SKUs can be purchased through the Office 365 administration center, and can be billed monthly. Details are below:

Name	Virtual cores	Memory (GB)	Peak renders/hr	Cost
P1	8	25	2400	$4,995/mo
P2	16	50	4800	$9,995/mo
P3	32	100	9600	$19,995/mo

What to use when

Sharing capabilities:

PBI Embedded A	PBI Premium EM	PBI Premium P
Embed PBI Reports in your own application	Embed PBI Reports in your own application	Embed PBI Reports in your own application
	Embed PBI Reports in SaaS applications (SharePoint, Teams)	Embed PBI Reports in SaaS applications (SharePoint, Teams)
		Share Power Reports, dashboards and datasets through Power BI Apps (workspaces)
		Ad hoc dashboard sharing from personal workspaces

With the addition of the Power BI Embedded capacity based SKUs, many of the concerns around Premium pricing have been addressed. I would still like to see all EM SKUs available monthly, and to see a “P0” premium SKU, but it’s fairly clear as to which scenarios call out for which licenses.

An ISV that is embarking on the use of Power BI embedded will at the very least need a Power BI Pro license. When development gets to the point where sharing with a team is necessary, a Power BI Embedded A SKU can be purchased from Azure. Once 24/7 availability is required, the ISV may wish to switch to an Premium EM capacity. An ISV should never require a P SKU unless capacity demands it, or they have additional requirements.

An organization that has a few data analysts or Power Users that need to share reports with a broader audience would likely be well served with one of the EM SKUs. This scenario assumes that the organization is also using SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, or both. This approach will allow the power users (who will require a Pro license as well) to embed Power BI content within a SharePoint page or a Microsoft Teams tab where it can be accessed by users without a Pro license. This organization would need to include more than 63 users accessing the reports to be financially viable.

Finally, larger organizations with a significant investment in Power BI, or organizations that don’t currently utilize SharePoint Online or Microsoft Teams would benefit from a Premium P capacity. With this, the Power BI interface could be utilized by end users to access shared content without a Pro license. Given it’s monthly cost, compared to the monthly cost of Pro, the organization would need to have at least 500 active report consumers for this approach to practically considered.

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Which Premium SKU is Needed to embed Power BI Reports in SharePoint and Microsoft Teams

Published September 17, 2017

A short time ago, I posted an article explaining the difference between a Power BI Pro license, and Power BI Premium capacity, and the fact that you’ll at least need one or the other in order to share a Power BI report on a SharePoint page via the Power BI web part. Although that article didn’t mention it, the same requirement is also true for embedding a report in a Microsoft Teams tab.

Power BI Report embedded in a Microsoft Teams tab

Power BI Report embedded in a SharePoint Page

Since there are two major SKU types for Power BI premium, and that there was (and is) a fair amount of confusion around this area, I also published another article attempting to clear up the confusion. While this article was based on all the information publicly available at the time, new information has pointed out that it is incorrect.

The two major SKU types are P and EM, with P standing for Premium and EM for Embedded. This matters significantly because the two SKU types have significantly different entry points and therefore costs.

The P SKU was the only one introduced when Premium was originally announced. It gives organizations the ability to place Power BI assets in a premium capacity container (a Power BI “app”), and once this is done, anyone can consume these assets whether or not they have a license.

Subsequent to this, an additional SK (EM) was introduced to address Power BI Embedded. Power BI embedded allows an ISV to use Power BI to add reports to their own applications. In this scenario, the reports run from the ISV’s tenant. Originally the assets were housed in Azure, but with the availability of Premium capacity, the decision was made to shift Power BI Embedded to use this new model. Given that the requirements of an ISV are not the same as a general organization, this new SKU was introduced. The EM SKU comes with a significantly lower entry point and cost, but also with significant restrictions. This is where the confusion sets in.

The wording around the restrictions on the EM SKU indicated that it could not be used for the SharePoint web part, and that a P SKU, or a Pro license would be required for that use case. This is where my earlier article is incorrect. I have since had conversations with the product team, and have been informed in no uncertain terms that the EM SKU CAN be used for both SharePoint web part, and Teams tab embedding of Power BI reports.

This is a very significant difference. An organization that is using Power BI casually, but has a few reports that they want to share with a broad audience was looking at a cost of almost $5,000 per month to do this. Given that the cost of a Pro license is $10/user/month, this meant that the organization needed to have at least 500 frequent report consumers before Premium was even worth considering. Also given the fact that the embedding features available in both SharePoint and Teams require that Pro or Premium SKU, this could be a real disincentive to its use. However, given that the EM SKU start at approximately $650/month for the entire organization, this becomes much more approachable, and it lowers the bar to entry significantly. This should result in significantly greater adoption of these Power BI embedding features, and consequently, of Power BI as a whole.

To be clear, there are still restrictions around the EM SKU. You cannot share Power BI apps with this SKU, but you CAN use it to embed reports in both SharePoint and Microsoft Teams.

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Power BI Embedded is not for Embedding Power BI Reports

Published August 23, 2017

NOTICE Sept 17 2017 – The central thrust of this post is incorrect. I am leaving it here, because it still contains valid information, but for an update, please go to this article – Which Premium SKU is Needed to embed Power BI Reports in SharePoint and Microsoft Teams

I have run into this point of confusion several times since the GA of the Power BI Premium SKU. As I mentioned in my post about licensing, the Power BI web part for SharePoint requires the user viewing the report to have a Pro license. Alternatively, if the organization has purchase Power BI premium capacity, and the report has been deployed to that capacity, then all organizational users will be able to view the report in the web part.

The initial announcement about Premium licensing laid out 5 different SKUs for premium, P1, P2 and P3. These SKUs are the “normal” SKUs that are intended to be used by Power BI customers. The “P” stands for Premium. Subsequently, 3 additional SKUs were announced at the Data Insights summit to be used by ISVs. These SKUs are EM1, EM2, and EM3. The “EM” stands for embedded. The embedded in this case means Power BI embedded. That’s where the confusion sets in.

Power BI Embedded is the ISV offering for Power BI. With Power BI embedded, software vendors can use Power BI as the reporting engine in their application. A number of vendors have taken advantage of this capability in the recent past including Nintex with their Hawkeye product, and ourselves with tyGraph for Yammer Reporting. With Power BI embedded, all of the processing for the application is done in the vendor’s Power BI tenant. Customers don’t require a Power BI license of any sort to use the applications. Recently, Power BI embedded has moved to a premium model as well, which is why the EM SKUs exist. They are for purchase by software vendors to power their own applications.

If we have a look at the pricing for each of these SKUs (in $US/month), we can see that the EM SKUs are significantly cheaper, but they also come with the important restriction that they can ONLY be used by ISVs.

Capacity Node	Cores	Back end cores	Front end cores	Cost
P1	8	4 cores, 25 GB RAM	4 cores	$4,995
P2	16	8 cores, 50 GB RAM	8 cores	$9,995
P3	32	16 cores, 100 GB RAM	16 cores	$19,995
EM1	1	0.5 cores, 3 GB RAM	0.5 cores	$625
EM2	2	1 core, 5 GB RAM	1 core	$1,245
EM3	4	2 cores, 10 GB RAM	2 cores	$2,495

It may be natural to think that because your goal is to “embed” a Power BI report in SharePoint, that you will be able to use one of the cheaper, “embedded” SKUs. Microsoft loves to overload terms when they name things, and this is one of those times that this tendency leads to confusion. Make no mistake, in order to embed a Power BI report in a SharePoint page, and to have other users be able to view it, you will need to have a Pro license, and your users will either need Pro licenses as well, OR your organization will need to have purchased a Power BI Premium “P” SKU, not an “EM” SKU.

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