Ari Schorr and Seayoung Rhee are product marketing managers in the Microsoft Office Division focused on Excel and Business Intelligence, respectively.
Power BI for Office 365 is a new self-service business intelligence (BI) offering enabling businesses to gain insights from their data in powerful new ways within Excel and Office 365. Customers now have the ability to easily search, discover and access data inside and outside of their organization and, with just a few clicks, shape and transform that data. They can also analyze and create stunning interactive visualizations that uncover hidden insights to share and collaborate from virtually anywhere, on nearly any device.
Key features are:
Powerful Self-Service BI in Excel 2013: We are taking our most powerful BI solutions and building them directly into Excel. These solutions package the data discovery, analysis and visualization process into one self-service BI solution, which is essential for business customers who are looking to get bigger returns on their data. Features include:
Collaborate and stay connected with Office 365: While all of these tools enable great self-service BI, asking business customers to work within a BI silo significantly decreases the potential value of their data to the entire organization. That’s why we’ve made all of these Excel capabilities available in the cloud with Office 365, so customers can share and access their BI reports and models across the desktop, Web and devices, all in a trusted, managed environment.
Business that can rapidly gain insights from their data will lead their peers in the industry in the next decade. The ability to easily access any kind of data, extend existing IT systems, empower users customers with familiar tools to gain insights and quickly deploy powerful self-service BI solutions will become a key enabler for these businesses to differentiate themselves from their peers. Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help the enterprise through this transition, and only Microsoft is able to offer these features together in one complete cloud-based offering.
To learn more about Power BI for Office 365 see below for some Frequently Asked Questions and go here to register for the preview, coming later this summer!
Q: What benefits will this service bring to customers?
Power BI for Office 365 empowers customers with a powerful platform to address several business needs, including, delivering self-service BI solutions to everyday business users natively within the environment they’re already familiar with – Excel and enabling collaboration and accessibility by putting BI in the cloud through Office 365. Not only will business customers be able to easily publish data sets and models to share with their colleagues, but their data will be accessible from virtually anywhere – on their desktop at work, over the Web at home, and on their mobile device while traveling. We will also be equipping IT with a set of management tools that enables them to safely leverage on-premise and external data sources within their organization’s trusted environment and monitor employee collaboration around this data. This is a crucial step for organizations looking to take their data insights to the next level and will enable IT to open up new doors for business users.
Q: What business intelligence features will be available in Excel?
Microsoft is taking our most powerful business intelligence tools and building them directly into Excel. These solutions package the data discovery and presentation process into one self-service BI solution, which is essential for business customers who are looking to get bigger returns on their data.
Q: How does the connection to Office 365 work? What features are available?
Power BI for Office 365 enables customers to collaborate and stay connected virtually anytime/anywhere through the cloud. The connection to Office 365 allows customers to share and access their BI models across the desktop, Web and devices, all in a trusted, managed environment.
Q: Can you talk more about the mobile BI offering? What is it and what devices are compatible? Will this work across non-Microsoft devices and platforms (including Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, etc.)?
Power BI will provide touch optimized access to BI reports and models stored in Office 365 through the browser with HTML5 or through the Windows or iPad mobile app. Within the application, customers can find Excel and Power View content, interact and present that content on their device, and then share that content via email. We will offer support for other widely adopted platforms at a later date.
Q: How does Power BI for Office 365 differentiate from other offerings currently in market?
Power BI for Office 365 is the first cloud-based business intelligence service that brings together Microsoft’s full suite of self-service BI solutions and essential IT management tools that allow businesses to leverage on-premise and external data in a singular, secured environment. Our goal is to provide technology that enables employees to practice the art of analytics wherever they are, while providing IT with management technologies that increase collaboration in a trusted environment.
Q: Will on-premise Office customers be able to access these features?
Customers using the Excel 2013 application can create BI reports with features like PowerPivot and Power View. We provide the option to either utilize their on premise SharePoint and SQL Server BI infrastructure, or they may choose the Power BI for Office 365 service for publishing and sharing their reports.
Q: When will Power BI for Office 365 be available? How do I get it?
Customer can go here (http://www.office.com/powerbi) to register for the preview, coming out later this summer. Regarding general availability, we have no further information to share at this time.
Q: How much will Power BI for Office 365 cost?
We have no further information to share at this time. We’ll communicate pricing information at a later date.
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