In a Microsoft blog yesterday the Redmond company revealed it’s planning to release a preview of its improved Power BI service, at first to U.S. customers, but the company says to global customers at a later date. Anyone with a business email address can access the cloud-based business analytics service and through any browser or a Power BI mobile app can keep track of business data via live operational dashboards.

The “business of business intelligence”, as Microsoft calls it, is a non-technical, easy to use tool that gives access to data that is both stored in the cloud and also locally. Microsoft says, “Connect to your data in minutes, with built-in connectors and pre-built dashboards and reports from a wide variety of sources including GitHub, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, SendGrid and Zendesk.” Connectors will also soon be available for Inkling Markets, Intuit, Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, Sage, Sumo Logic, Visual Studio Application Insights, Visual Studio Online. With the Power BI Designer reports can also be created using interactive charts, maps, graphs, and data transformations, which can be shaped, visualized and shared on devices running BI.

Microsoft stated that once Power BI reaches general availability a free version (I GB data capacity) of the product under the same name will be released, and for $9.99 a month a version called Power BI Pro with more features, higher data capacity (10 GB), and better live connectivity will become available. Microsoft also announced that sometime during the year clients versions of Power BI will be released for iPhone, Android and Universal Windows (for phones, tablets and PCs). A preview version of its Power BI app for iPad was already made available last December.

Sign up for an account and find out more about Microsoft’s Big Data platform here.

mage courtesy of ExtremeTech.com