Power BI was first released to the general public on July 24, 2015 by Microsoft.
Since then it has gained a huge user community across enterprise organisations and SME’s due to it’s rich features, ease of use and compatibility with other Microsoft products.
In February 2019, Gartner.com, the leading enterprise software review and consultancy, confirmed Microsoft as Leader in the BI tools and Data visualisation workspace.
Power BI is a SaaS service that Microsoft initially released as an add-on to Excel.
It is now a reporting and analytics solution in its own right for enterprises of all sizes. By virtue of being from the Microsoft family, it seamlessly integrates with other products from the vendor, including Office 365.
Looking at Microsoft power BI customers by industry, Computer Software (16%), Information Technology and Services (11%) and Hospital & Health Care (6%) are the largest segments.
As the BI market continues to evolve, it demonstrates how critical the right business intelligence tools is in a data-driven world.
Worldwide data creation will grow to 63 zettabytes (ZB) by 2025. For scale, that is about 500 billion iPhones worth of storage. In light of this explosive growth, business intelligence tools are more important than ever and PBI is a key player in this area.
Currently, one vendor — Microsoft — dominates the market in terms of user adoption. The massive growth of the Microsoft Power BI cloud service has continued, fuelled in part by the bundling of this product with Office 365 at a greatly reduced price.
It seems that many organisations view Power BI as being the default option for Data Visualisation and Business Intellegence tools.
Microsofts cost effective pricing for Power BI has driven market share given the eye watering costs of offering from other vendors.
An example is Oracle OBIEE which can result in $millions in licensing costs for a mid range BI toolset when PBI may be a few thousand dollars.
Microsoft PBI has market share of c10% in the business intelligence bi market and this outstrips the competion.
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