PowerBI Desktop not really free?

[kcwilsonii]

The desktop version appears to be free.

I am told by my companies licensee expert that it is not.

We are running Office 365 (2013 version is running) on a E3 Enterprise contract.

I checked my own licensing by logging in under my work email address and it shows PowerBi as free.

So what am I missing that my licensee expert is seems totally against the Desktop version being free

and hence preventing me from getting PowerBi as an approved software package?

[Seth_C_Bauer · Accepted solution]

@kcwilsonii Couple things. Licensing and the "Free" subscription in O365 only applies to the Service (Azure Software as a Service) part of Power BI. This is where you publish your reports, create and share dashboards etc. There are limitations to what you can do in the Service.

The Desktop, is a stand alone download that is completely free. You download this to your personal machine... You can do all your data mashup and build reports without any sort of license. You just need the free license applied to, or you can sign up for Power BI yourself for free. There are multiple ways to get access to the Service. This is provided your IT department isn't managing things, if they are, you may not be able to sign up via Power BI. 

Regardless - Desktop is totally free and unless your company restricts downloads, you can get this at any time and start playing. The Service requires the Free or Pro license and that can be assigned by your IT, or by you getting it via Power BI. (provided IT hasn't taken away that ability, which they can).

Hope that helps

[kcwilsonii]

That's what I thought, I am having a bit of a back and forth trying to get it approved. I already have it installed and use it without any problems, but I have admin rights on my computer. Many do not and it has to get on an approved software list. We already have office 365 subscriptions for our users.

There seems to be a bit a power struggle on what we should be using BI wise.

We have several other BI tools that people like and dislike and they both have their limitations

with cost being an obvious one and usability sometimes being worse than just using Excel

I like having a backup BI tool though and PowerBI is a pretty good tool and is evolving in a nice way.