There was lots of exciting news out of this week’s Microsoft Data Insights Summit in Seattle.
Whether you’re new to Microsoft Power BI, or just want to learn about the latest features, the keynote video below is a great place to jump in (scroll down for our quick quide to the good stuff!).
Corporate Vice President James Phillips admitted that Microsoft wasn’t always at the forefront of the data and analytics industry.
“If we go back 3-4 years, there were reasonable questions about Microsoft’s commitment to the Business Intelligence market. I think if you look at the level of investments that we’ve made, the progress that we’ve made, the growth of our user population, I think all of those questions are far, far behind us.”
Some quick stats on the adoption of Power BI globally:
- 30,000 data models added daily to the Power BI service
- 2 million queries per hour from Power BI reports and dashboards
- 11.5 million data models hosted on the Power BI Service
- 10 million monthly publish-to-web views
Here’s how to jump straight to some highlights in the video:
00:00 – James Phillips gives an overview of Power BI
15:40 – Power BI Premium now generally available
25:45 – Power Apps
36:00 – New features (some available now, others over the next three months)
45:00 – Power BI Desktop (like that comparison of movie star data shown above)
1:02:00 – Analytics enhancements
1:05:00 – AI in Power BI (easy ways to analyse data, like the “Explain Change” button)
Another cool new feature: Power BI Desktop will make it easy to thread visualisations together “to tell stories,” making it “the Powerpoint for data.”
