Power BI has solidified its position as a top-tier leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for analytics and BI platforms through continually listening to users and enhancing and expanding features. With its robust capabilities, Power BI empowers users to effortlessly convert raw data into compelling visualizations and interactive reports. Building upon this success, Microsoft has now unveiled Fabric, an all-in-one SaaS analytics solution that seamlessly integrates data and analytics tools across the entire data lifecycle into a single, comprehensive platform. Additionally, Copilot in Power BI is an AI-powered assistant to help users create more effective and efficient reports and gain automated insights.

In this entry, we will explore what the release of Fabric means for organizations already using Power BI, how they can help expand users’ skills, and the impact on costs.  

About Microsoft Fabric 

Image credit: Microsoft 

Microsoft Fabric introduces a groundbreaking approach to data analytics, designed to tackle the complexities of modern data landscapes. By leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI), Fabric enables businesses to gain actionable insights and make data-driven decisions with ease. 

With the elimination of the reliance on data and analytics services from multiple suppliers, you can now execute data integration, data engineering, data storage, data warehousing, real-time analytics, data science, business intelligence and governance on a single unified, AI-powered, SaaS platform, that’s the beauty of Fabric. 

I’m already using Power BI. Do I have to migrate to Fabric? 

No. There is no migration required. Fabric capabilities are built into the Power BI experience, but if you choose to continue using Power BI exactly as you are today, you can do so with no impacts to cost or resources. Power BI remains the core tool for data analysis and visualization, empowering users with its capabilities. However, Fabric offers so many new features that we highly recommend trying them out while they are free in public preview.  

How will Fabric make the Power BI experience better? 

New features! While Power BI continues to thrive, Microsoft Fabric introduces some exciting new capabilities that will enhance and simplify your data analytics journey. Some of these are: 

Feature #1: Direct Lake mode 

By loading data into Fabric Lakehouse tables instead of importing into a Power BI dataset, you can take advantage of the speed of import with the convenience of DirectQuery’s real-time updates. This allows you to make changes to the data in the Lakehouse or Warehouse and instantly see them in Power BI reports, without needing to refresh, but at lightning-fast speeds. 

Feature #2: Dataflows Gen2 

You might be wondering how you get the data into the Lakehouse to utilize Direct Lake mode. You can use Power Query in a Dataflow (Gen2) in Fabric to load the data to a Lakehouse, just as you would traditionally load to a Power BI dataset. In fact, the new dataflows enable appending data in addition to overwriting every time it runs. But dataflows aren’t the only way to load data into the Lakehouse – there are now many more tools at your disposal, such as data pipelines and Spark jobs.  

Feature #3: Robust Data Engineering 

With the addition of data factory pipelines, Spark jobs, and notebooks to the toolbelt, it’s now possible for different personas to collaborate on ingesting and transforming data in a warehouse or lakehouse. With Power Query alone, for example, we could not delete a subset of data from a dataset. With these other tools at your disposal, you can make updates to data in the lakehouse that will be immediately reflected in the Power BI dataset(s) connected to it, taking advantage of Direct Lake mode. By combining different tools and allowing developers to use what they’re comfortable with, you can more quickly and easily get your data in the form it needs to be in. 

Feature #4: SQL Endpoint for the Lakehouse 

Now that we’ve covered the quantum leap forward with Direct Lake and you’re convinced that a Fabric Lakehouse is a beautiful place for your Power BI data model to live, you can also make use of the SQL endpoint that comes with the Lakehouse. The (read-only) SQL endpoint allows you to query the delta tables in the Lakehouse (which are essentially the tables in the semantic model) with T-SQL. Many analysts are more comfortable with SQL than with DAX and this gives them the freedom to write exploratory queries against the data in addition to creating visuals or Excel pivot tables. And for those who aren’t comfortable with SQL or DAX, there is a visual query builder to make it even easier. 

Feature #5: Data Modeling on the Web 

For those who have been wishing for Power BI Desktop for the Mac, this is the answer. It’s now possible to develop complete semantic models and reports on the web without requiring a Desktop. This does not mean that Power BI Desktop will stop receiving updates and improvements. In fact, at Microsoft Build we were given a glimpse of features coming to Desktop soon including the ability to create calculation groups, an integrated DAX query view that provides measure dependency lineage, and Copilot for DAX.  

Feature #6: Copilot for Power BI

With Copilot, Power BI users can streamline the report creation process significantly. Copilot’s intelligent suggestions and automated insights enable users to quickly explore data, identify key trends, and create compelling visualizations. Copilot’s AI capabilities help users explore advanced visualization techniques and suggest appropriate chart types, layouts, and color schemes convey insights in the most impactful way. Its AI-powered features extend beyond report creation. It can also assist users in automating data analysis tasks. By leveraging Copilot, users can perform complex calculations, apply statistical functions, and identify outliers or patterns within their data. By incorporating Copilot into your workflow, users can enhance their ability to analyze and present data effectively, saving valuable time and resources.   

Feature #7: Git Integration 

With Microsoft Fabric, Power BI users can integrate their development workflows with version control systems, such as Git. This enables efficient collaboration among team members and facilitates seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines. By utilizing the version control capabilities, users can track changes, manage branches, and roll back to previous versions, ensuring the integrity and stability of their Power BI assets. 

Feature #8: Data Activator

Without resulting in action, reports and dashboards are just something to look at and admire. Data insights should make it clear what actions need to be taken to improve outcomes and with Data Activator, Fabric is making it even easier to integrate actions with insights. Data Activator provides a no-code method to find patterns or build triggers on your data and set in motion actions through notifications, alerts, or Power Automate Flows, for example.

What will Fabric cost? How does licensing work?  

Microsoft Fabric Capacities (F SKUs) offer developers the ability to create and share Fabric content across workloads through the familiar interface of Power BI Workspaces. With various resource tiers for memory and computing power, you can choose the best SKU for your application. F SKUs offer flexible usage without any time commitment.   

For customers accustomed to Power BI pricing, Fabric pricing will look very familiar. If you want to use Fabric features, you’ll need to purchase an F SKU (see table below) either in addition to a Power BI SKU or instead of a Power BI SKU. In the table below, an F64 is equivalent to a P1, and this is the level provided in the current Fabric trials.  

Additionally, you’ll still need Power BI pro licenses (or Premium Per User) for developers who will be publishing or sharing Power BI content (but not Fabric workloads). 

There are some differences between F SKUs and P SKUs, including: 

• • F SKUs are currently available in the Azure portal in a pay-as-you-go model. A reserved instance is similar to the equivalent P SKUs.  

• • F SKUs include Power BI workloads, but not vice versa. 

• • A SKUs (embedded) are still available, but only for Power BI. 

• • OneLake storage will need to be purchased. An example storage rate is provided as $0.023 per GB per month in US West 2. 

Determining the best capacity for your scenario can be a challenge, and a pricing calculator will be coming soon. There are a variety of combinations of licensing that are available for different situations. For example, a smaller organization might find that a combination of PPU licenses and a lower F capacity may be the best fit, while a larger organization may need more robust F capacities along with Power BI Pro licenses. 

Conclusion 

Microsoft Fabric is the biggest leap forward for Power BI since it was first released. Reach out to us at iLink Digital for a free consultation and discover how our expertise can transform your analytics strategy by incorporating Fabric.