Microsoft recently announced Premium Per User (PPU). This entry-level price point for Power BI Premium at the per-user level is catered towards medium-sized businesses and workgroups within large organizations. PPU provides a rich set of features that were traditionally available as Premium only. Here are the top five features available with a PPU license:
- Large datasets
- Refresh rate
- Deployment pipelines
- Pixel-perfect paginated reports
- Advanced security
Additionally, here’s a comparison of all the features available with PPU with Premium Capacity:
Source: Microsoft
Microsoft is taking an interesting approach to pricing: PPU is a standalone license that costs $20. However, if a user is already provisioned with a Pro License, then PPU can be purchased or upgraded for an additional $10.
Source: Microsoft
Though PPU allows us to utilize some of the features only available with Premium Capacity, there is no management of memory/CPU as with traditional Premium Per Capacity. Microsoft manages all the capacity-related tasks, just as it does with Power BI Pro. However, a tenant admin can manage select feature settings, such as Auto-Refresh and the XMLA endpoint setting.
When a user creates a workspace with a PPU license, the distinguishable icon will make it easy to segregate the workspace provisioned with PPU:
Finally, sharing and distribution are PPU specific. This means that others with a PPU license can view content created and shared by a PPU license. See the sharing and distribution scenarios below:
Source: Microsoft
This announcement is encouraging to see since it enables users to utilize some of the most sought-after features that were historically only available with Premium Capacity. Moreover, PPU allows users to scale workloads based on their needs and specific requirements. I expect to see many of our customers take advantage of this new capability.
If you have any questions about PPU or about how Inviso can help you with your Power BI initiatives, get in touch, we’re here to help! Getting Started with Power BI: 1-Day Assessment – Microsoft AppSource
