3 proven ways to optimize Power BI licensing costs
Microsoft Power BI is rightfully considered one of the most cost-effective business intelligence tools available, primarily due to its flexible licensing model and competitive pricing, which make the tool affordable for both large enterprises and small-to-mid-sized businesses. However, over time, even affordable costs can escalate to significant expenses if you don’t manage software licenses properly, which can negatively affect the overall ROI of Power BI implementation. Thus, proactive Power BI license cost optimization is vital.
In this article, experts from Itransition, a company that provides guidance from Power BI consultants to businesses implementing Power BI, give an overview of the Power BI licensing model and share tips on how to reduce licensing costs.
Power BI licensing: A brief recap
While Power BI can be used at no cost through the Power BI desktop app or free licenses of the Power BI cloud service, free solutions are generally insufficient for supporting full-scale business intelligence processes in an organization. To get access to collaborative workspaces, incremental data refreshes, and other capabilities essential for organization-wide analytics, companies need to opt for paid Power BI licenses.
Since Power BI’s licensing model includes a variety of options, for clarity, we’ll provide a brief overview of its overall structure and outline available licenses. Generally, they all fall into two major categories: user-based and capacity-based licenses.
1. User-based licenses
Companies can purchase these per-user licenses to provide individual employees with access to Power BI’s reporting capabilities.
- Power BI Pro
This is a standard user-based license which enables users to create and publish reports as well as collaborate on their reports with other Pro users.
Cost:
$14 per user per month.
- Power BI Premium per user
Along with capabilities included in Power BI Pro, this license grants users access to more advanced Power BI features, such as paginated reports, impact analysis, and automated content deployment.
Cost:
$24 per user per month.
2. Capacity-based licenses
Companies can also pay for the use of Power BI capacity – storage, memory, CPU, and other dedicated computing resources that enable data operations – to enable any number of users to view reports and interact with them without individual licenses.
- Microsoft Fabric
Microsoft Fabric consolidates a range of Microsoft’s data services into a unified end-to-end analytics platform, and Power BI serves as an integrated reporting and visualization layer within it. By purchasing a Microsoft Fabric capacity license, companies can enable enterprise-wide access to this entire software suite, including Power BI.
Cost:
Microsoft Fabric’s licenses come at different costs, with the cheapest option starting at $262 per month.
- Power BI Embedded
To enable an unlimited number of end-users to view reports generated in Power BI without individual licenses, a company can purchase a Power BI Embedded capacity license, which allows adding Power BI reports and dashboards directly to corporate websites and apps.
Cost:
The cost of Power BI Embedded varies, starting at $735 per month.
Power BI licensing: Cost optimization tips
- Minimizing the number of visuals on report pages
Each visual element on the report page (tables, area charts, slicers, etc.) generates queries to the underlying semantic model, during which CPU and memory resources are consumed. Having too many visuals can lead to excessive resource consumption, which can not only cause slower report performance but also increase the cost of capacity-based licenses for companies that had opted for a pay-as-you-go model.
So, to cut down on visuals in reports, a company should start by identifying report pages that have their excessive amouts. Using Power BI’s native Performance Analyzer tools can come in handy here, as it can provide insights into load times for visuals on different report pages. If the tool highlights that visual queries take too much time to resolve or if the Power BI engine renders them too slowly on the screen, this can indicate that the page containing these visuals is overloaded.
To address this issue, a company should reduce the number of images, charts, and other visuals on report pages (ideally, there should be no more than 9-10 visuals per page). For instance, multiple legacy card visuals used to display different KPIs can be replaced with a single new card visual, which allows for showing multiple metrics within one card. Also, it can be helpful to split massive and large report pages that contain multiple visuals into smaller and more minimalistic reports.
- Automating capacity pause and resume
By default, payments for Microsoft Fabric capacities are not automatically paused even when no reports are being viewed and data pipelines are idle. Companies can pause active capacities manually, but since manual processes are prone to human error, there is always a risk of missing idle capacity and facing unnecessary expenses. To overcome this bottleneck, a company can implement an automated solution for pausing and resuming the capacity without direct human involvement.
For example, a company can use a low-code Azure Logic Apps platform to create automated workflows and schedule capacity shutdowns for non-business hours, when the capacity is not utilized. Another option is to define specific capacity metrics (like reduced memory usage during a specific period) and create Azure Runbooks scripts that will automatically pause or resume Microsoft Fabric capacity when the predefined capacity utilization thresholds are met.
- Regularly reviewing the consumption of user-based licenses
Additionally, a company needs to continuously audit assigned user licenses to avoid unknowingly paying for ones it doesn’t need. For instance, this can be done with the help of the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, a tool that provides a centralized dashboard for license tracking and management.
With its help, a company can identify Pro or Premium Per User licenses whose owners did not view or create reports in several months and then either discard these licenses or reassign them to more active users. This tool also allows for reviewing specific license usage metrics to detect which owners of Premium Per User licenses are not using advanced Power BI features in their daily work and reassign them to a cheaper Power BI Pro license instead.
Final thoughts
While Power BI is widely considered a cost-effective analytics platform, its adopters can still incur significant expenses if they don’t manage Power BI license costs properly. License cost optimization is crucial for avoiding these unnecessary expenses, and the recommendations listed in this article can help you in this regard. Additionally, consider turning to certified Microsoft consultants, since their in-depth knowledge of Power BI licensing pitfalls and complexities can help you achieve more significant savings.