In this blog I’ve already written about Data Explorer and GeoFlow. During the courses I provided, I predicted that Microsoft was creating a full-fledged self-service Business Intelligence platform with the following components
- Power Pivot for self-service analysis
- Power View for self-service visualization
- Data Explorer for self-service ETL.
Yesterday (July 8th), this proved to be true when Microsoft announced Power BI for Office 365. What I didn’t expect was GeoFlow being included in de BI suite too – mainly because there’s also mapping functionality inside Power View – I more or less expected GeoFlow to evolve into a more general visualization tool (providing ‘guided tours’ through a visualizations), while the 3D mapping capabilities would be added to Power View.
Anyhow, here’s what you need to know about Power BI:
- Data Explorer will be called Power Query
- GeoFlow will be renamed to Power Map
- Power Pivot will be available for Office 365, thus enabling self-service analysis the cloud
- Power View will also be available for Office 365. Besides, it will finally be implemented in HTML 5. So long, Silverlight!
Furthermore, Microsoft adds collaborative workspaces inside Office 365. Sounds like Sharepiont – even more, because some of the functionality we already know from Sharepoint has been brought there: not only the sharing of data and insights, also data refresh for your Excel Data Models.
Power BI is not yet available (not even in preview yet), but if you’re curious, check out the video. Or one following blogposts from Microsoft:
Or from Chris Webb: