Power BI architecture and Licensing and Cost Confusion for a noob

[dean132]

Hello There, 

I am brand new to Power BI, I am trying to help out our financial analyst with providing a solution to our customers. However I keep going round and round in circles as to what the best solution would be and the most cost effective way to achieve our goals.

OK so my company analysis some data for multiple customers, our financial analyst has been using power BI desktop to create reports for the customers. The data source is currently an on premise SQL database. However what we would like to be able to do, is give our customers access to their reports via a website. So obvioulsy each customers data is different but essentially the report is the same for each of them.

From what I am reading (please correct me if I am wrong) in order to embed the Power Bi report into a website and give users access to their own report I need a power bi pro license for each customer that logs in to see the report. This might not be too prohibitive to be honest but its more than we would like to spend initially. However in order to prevent the users from having to login to see the report I need to configure "app owns data" and this setup needs Power BI premium.

What I am trying to figure out is if there is an on premise way to do this initally until such a time its cost effective to start buying premium.

Sorry for the long winded question any help greatly appreciated.

[sevenhills]

Are you indirectly talking about Power BI Report Server? I assume yes. On-premise way is Power BI Report Server, where you can host both existing SSRS reports and Power BI reports (of PBIRS server version).

Note:

- PBIRS is a different release cycle and has different server Power BI desktop 

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Please check other articles in the group 

- https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Architecture-performance-and-development/m-p/1130202

- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/whitepapers 

[dean132]

Thank you for taking the time to reply I really do appreciate it.

To be honest I am not sure what I am talking about anymore the more I read the more confused I get.

What I don't want to do is to sign up to Power BI Premium to the tune of $5000 a month. 

All I really want to do is present each customers reports on a web application that only they can access, but I don't want them to have to login with a username and password that is a part of my Azure AD Account. I am happy to pay for Power BI embedded, but from reading about the requirements for that I still need to purchase premium? Or maybe I am completely wrong and I can do all of this away from Azure?

I am not sure if this is possible.

[sevenhills · Accepted solution]

In the second link, I provided has lot of links and Please go through this "Planning a Power BI Enterprise Deployment" in particular. It will answer most of your questions.

To be frank, $5K per month is not a big amount for mid range companies and above

Given my experience, those who have web application presence and existing reports using SSRS,
most of the existing companies are going to PBIRS first
and then to Power BI service
and final goal as mixed of both.

Phased or stepped approach. 

[dean132]

Thanks again for your reply, I'll keep reading I think that makes it a little clearer.