new power bi licensing

[dilumd]

Dear Friends,

Today I have got an e-mail from MS Power BI which says that “changes to Power BI free licensing”. Under this new licensing policy,

1. Do we have to have Power BI pro version to share our dashboards? Will it restrict the publish to Power BI service?
2. If you have Pro version for the person who creates the dashboard share that with normal users within the company should the viewers also have to have pro version or the free version?
3. Under free version are they going to extent the no of data bases that they support?
4. If you specify your wise access to dashboard these yours should also have Power BI Pro version or only the free version would serve the purpose?

Thanks

[GilbertQ · Accepted solution]

Hi @dilumd

Here are my answers to your questions

1. Going forward you will have to have Power BI Pro to share dashboards. If you use the Free Version you are still able to publish to the Power BI Service, but you will not be able to share it with anyone.
2. Going forward if you want to share the recipients of your dashboards will have to have the Pro or Premium licensing enabled.
3. Under free they are going to give it the same capabilites as the Pro version, with one BIG change that there will be no sharing.
4. For any access to viewing other peoples dashboards you will require the Pro or Premium licenses.

You can find more details here for the licensing

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/

[Anonymous]

The structure doesn't make sense to me and Pro should be able to share which is for developers.

Viewing simples graphs should then be free.

My idea posted here:

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/19666702-free-license-for-sharing

[dilumd]

https://youtu.be/kKLKv4QPlxE

Good video explaining new licensing

[markduffill]

The YouTube video gives a clear explanation of the situation and also highlights the point that the Power BI Premium model is very unsuitables for SMEs - its just too expensive. Also, the Power BI Pro model makes it too expensive to give all users access to consume reports.

Here are my suggestions to Microsoft for a sensible model:

1) Release the Power BI Report Server seperately from Power BI Premium so that smaller organisations can have their own on-premise server (exactly like SQL Server + SSRS) with a licence for all users to consume reports. This should bring the cost down significantly as it removes the cloud service hardware, infrastructure and data streaming.

2) Make the chargeable Pro version the only version able to publish reports (to cloud service or on-premise server) and the free version able to consume from either. Ie Pro version is for authoring and publishing and free version for consuming. This just seems so logical to me.

An alternative to point 2) (as suggested in the YouTube video) is a Power BI Lite licence for the consume-only version. You can vote for this in Power BI Ideas: 

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/19202278-power-bi-lite-license

Vote for separate on-premise Power BI Server here:

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/19210306-power-bi-server-for-smes

[kkemseke]

For me, this is a disaster... I was a huge fan of Power BI, and made sure that everyone in the company used the dashboards created by me. Now they should pay for just using these dashboards? No way I can explain this to my boss. The communication done by Microsoft was faulty on so many levels. They also promised that we would get a pro account for a year... doesn't happen since I've already tested the pro version. Such a rip-off. 

[aalvear]

This is the worse news  POWER  BI  Community has got since the release of POWER BI the best tool to make reports and share them has SHOOT himself with this decision. We had develop and build (& sell ) many  dshboard with the feature to  share it for free.

It seems that  there is a new MKT manager with  a different ponit  of view on how this product should be develop beacuase this  is not behaivor or the things we (users) had seen since the release and the develop of the product, that  in my  opinion it was the first  MS product  with  a different  mind set, focus on the customer use, instead of the money needed.

The solution will be to  have a a micro-add ins to  put in our customers web pages.  

[markduffill]

I've been awating for some time the announcement of the ability to host Power BI reports on an on-premise server, like with SSRS.

Really disappointed to find that this is only available with the Power BI Premium offering at £3,100/month (UK pounds). Way too much for the SME customers I deal with.

I did manage to get a response from someone at Microsoft who said the Power BI Report Server will be available in the futre but had not pricing or dates. Does anyone have more infomration on this?

[dilumd]

Yes! current licensing policy is way too expensive when compared to other possibile options. we are waiting for a possitive feedback from Microsoft. otherwise will have to evaluate onther software.

[dilumd]

[GilbertQ · Accepted solution]

Hi @dilumd

Here are my answers to your questions

1. Going forward you will have to have Power BI Pro to share dashboards. If you use the Free Version you are still able to publish to the Power BI Service, but you will not be able to share it with anyone.
2. Going forward if you want to share the recipients of your dashboards will have to have the Pro or Premium licensing enabled.
3. Under free they are going to give it the same capabilites as the Pro version, with one BIG change that there will be no sharing.
4. For any access to viewing other peoples dashboards you will require the Pro or Premium licenses.

You can find more details here for the licensing

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/

[ElizabethTachji]

Hi,

How many Power BI Pro licenses can we have with 0365 business premium subscription.

Cheers

Elizabeth

[GilbertQ]

Hi there

You can have as many as you require, there is no limit.

[alexSPY]

Hi @GilbertQ,

Forgive me, but I am still confused. I am a Pro user, and have created several reports and dashboards which I share throughout my organization of 50+ users. Do these users, who simply view my content, have to be Pro users as well? They are not making edits to the content, they are simply viewing the content that I have developed.

Thanks for the clarification!

[dmoffat]

Yes you are right ... $10 per person  or $500+ per month 🙂  Great eh?

I have decided that there is ONE solution, and although I have kept it to myself until now, I think it might be time to mention it....

More than one person can log into a single Power BI account at a time ... So why not get ONE Pro account for each selected Group of your Viewers (it might be everyone so you may only need one) and share it and its password to everyone that will consume your Dashboards and Reports...

YES this was not how this was intended BUT frankly I really think MS's theory is that EVERYONE will be so busy creating their own Reports and Dashboards that they won't be able to to their actual jobs 😉 ... so they will NEED their own login.... Not true 

A developer with their own Pro sub can then Share their content to the Group Pro license or licenses so they can consume the reports and dashboards. The Group account can be assigned only View rights by the Source account user and they can be prevented from changing, printing passing on the assigned docs.

The one thing that will always come up with this is the fact that any of the Group account users can add their own stuff to the Account.  Simple solution though ... have the Admin go in and delete anything added periodically (like daily) and declare adding stuff to this account is a BCM (Bad Career Move)...

I know MS might try to declare this against the contract we have in a Pro license (but I don't see this anywhere) but nonetheless these Group accounts would be exclusively Viewing platforms and their demand on Power BI' processing and especially it's storage would be nothing at all.

We all know that logins and passwords are shared between co-workers EVERYWHERE for genuine reasons of keeping their business moving along, so this is not an outrageous idea.  Also I do not think this is a security issue because any individual Licensee can always share their private Login and Password with anyone anytime, so what's the difference.

Also at any time an Administrator can change the login Password for a Group account and redistribute the new one to the list of acceptable Viewers.  And of course if everything is created from PBIX files there will be backups of the Content always there if some a-hole changes the password themselves (which should be the last thing they ever do for your company 😉 )..

And since there are already many people who use their logins on different machines all the time and already share their logins I think if MS shut this down it would be politically unpleasant.

Then maybe MS would just come up with some cheap Viewer License (say $2 per Month?)...

Have fun with this ...

**bleep**

[slujan-1]

This is the same solution to our issue that we came up with. I am wondering if you have had luck using this technique? If so, would you recommend it for a smaller company? 

[alexSPY]

We decided it was best to simply issue each user a pro license until we can move all of our services into Azure. Overall cost is negligable compared to the BI value we get out of the service.

[GilbertQ]

That is a good idea, and glad that you can see the value in the Power BI Service.

[mmace1]

Sorry, we still haven't implemented this particular dashboard, so we haven't tested it.

[mmace1]

According to the moderator here, this solution (having multiple people share a Pro login, for the purposes of viewing dashboards only), is fine: 

http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Is-it-against-the-service-agreement-for-multiple-users-to-sh...

[mbegg]

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@mmace1 wrote:

According to the moderator here, this solution (having multiple people share a Pro login, for the purposes of viewing dashboards only), is fine: 

http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Is-it-against-the-service-agreement-for-multiple-users-to-sh...

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@mmace1 just be aware that (a) you can't implement row level security & (b) you can't stop sharing a dashboard with someone & (c) if someone leaves your organisation, can they continue to login (unless you change the password)?

[mmace1]

Thanks, yes I'd throught of those downsides as well!  Most of it is negated because this particular data - really isn't very sensitive.  

b.) The inability to stop sharing is fine

c.)  I'd throught of people leaving the organization, yet still being able to login.  For us, we could either 1.) As with shared mailboxes, a manager enters the password the first time - thus the user never knows it or 2.) What I'd actually advocate - the data for this shared dash is not sensitive, so I would just leave it.  Worst case change the password post-problem(s). 

a.) Row level security - a bummer, but still falls under "this data isn't sensitive", so there's nothing we'd bother to restrict anyway.  The way this data is currently shared - everyone can see everything, and that's actually the point.