Forum Discussion
Power BI Embedded Pricing - Am i mistaken?
Wow, that's absolutely insane. How can Microsoft justify such a massive deviation in pricing? I'm just glad I didn't roll out Embedded based on the previous pricing model! This is a huge eye opener for me using cloud, especially Azure. One greedy move by Microsoft and your business could be bankrupted. Incredible.
What makes me really angry about this is it goes TOTALLY against Microsoft's main tagline surrounding the cloud of "only pay for what you use" In this case it's bull, because I would be paying $750 per month to allow a handful of users to view a report a couple of times a week.
Anonymous in answer to your question I think my only option is to go elsewhere for my reporting solution. It's a shame as Power BI is fantastic, and as a developer with SSRS for the past 10 years its great to see the direction they are heading. Unfortunately Microsoft appear to want to completely abandon everyone in this space except for the large faceless corporations who can pay this.
Poor form Microsoft, very poor.
Microsoft EmployeeThanks for your feedback.
The Power BI workspace collections which is charged by sessions is being deprecated. It will continue working for a limited time, after which all users will be required to migrate to the new system to continue enjoying the full-suite of Power BI Embedded features. At this moment you can still use Power BI workspace collections.
As to the new Power BI Embedded, which is charged at least $750 monthly(A1 tier), you can pause the the capacity for cost saving. You won't be charged if the capacity is paused. The product team is working on the correlated APIs so that it will be possible to start/pause the capacity in a programmatically way. Then you'll be able to pause the capacity automatically in off-work hours.
How can this possibly be justified by Microsoft? And what has happened to Azure being pay as you go?
I'm sorry but taking a phone call from a customer and saying "Just a minute whilst I unpause my very expensive reporting server for 1 minute so you can run your report" is not what I would call a particularly constructive work around for this.
With these prices I am utterly appalled. I'm a loyal Microsoft developer and have recommended Azure and Power BI to multiple clients here in Australia. That has now changed.
insoldevHelper I
Thanks Eric - I was initially critical though the improvement to the product is game changing really, and when the powershell automation kicks in I think that will address almost everyone's concerns.
It's also significantly easier to manage - workspace collections were a bit of a dog if I'm being honest.
As per your message the pricing of Power BI Premium, which is replacing Power BI Embedded shall be better that the minimum $750, once the programmatic pause is developed. However, the Pricing page of Power BI Premium (https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/calculator/) shows that the minimum pricing say for 100 users per month shall be $5,195 / month.
So from what i understand, as an ISV, we have no option but to spend minimum of $5195 per month. Is that correct ? If not, can you please help me understand what combinations should we use for low usage (less than 100 users) on Azure with data residing on Azure.
As per your message, i understand that once you have API for Pause, Power BI Embedded's replacement which is Power BI Premium shall be lesser than $750/ month. However, the pricing website for Power BI Premium shows a minimum of $5195 per month when pricing 100 users is checked for.
Can you please explain the low priced option as an ISV to leverage Power BI embedded features for a 100 User group ??
If you are embedding only in another application, you can use an A SKU, but anyone internal using it, needs a pro license. We are using this model for our customers and we are a fortune 200 company last time I checked. P SKU is 5K a month.
I would say in the ISV model your option is A sku for ~$750 a month that gives you 3 GB RAM is all. We had to go to A3 to get any kind of performance $3K/mo, not to mention if you use cubes, and use AAS, we had to rack that up to an S3 otherwise we ran out of memory processing cubes. And the cubes are not big. GB's, but less than 10. You can pause A SKU's and you can do this through Azure portal yourself anytime. P sku's you have to be a global admin to do it and it's a yearly committment which A SKU is pay as you go.