If you're interested in Power BI, you're not alone. This platform is popular because it is part of the Microsoft family of products. However, Power BI service alone may not be ideal for embedded analytics, so many use Power BI Embedded instead. Still, either product may not be entirely suitable for embedded analytics needs.
Power BI service and Power BI Embedded are two Microsoft analytics solutions developed throughout the years. While these phrases are sometimes used interchangeably, they are pretty distinct. There are a few methods to understand the distinctions between Power BI Embedded and Power BI service, which we'll go through in this post, along with a possible alternative.
What is Power BI?
Microsoft's Power BI is a technology-driven business intelligence solution for analyzing and displaying raw data to offer actionable insights. It brings together business analytics, data visualization, and best practices to enable a company to make data-driven choices.
Power BI is a business analytics solution that allows you to visualize your organization's data and share relevant data findings. It creates various dashboards and Business Intelligence reports using data from many sources.
The Power BI architecture is an Azure-based service. Power BI can connect to several different data sources. Power BI Desktop allows you to generate reports and data visualizations on the dataset. The Power BI gateway connects to on-premise data sources to provide real-time data for reporting and analytics.
The cloud services used to publish Power BI reports and data visualizations are known as Power BI services. You may connect to their data from anywhere using Power BI mobile applications. Apps for Power BI are available for Windows, iOS, and Android.
The Software as a Service (SaaS) component of Power BI is Power BI Service. Power BI Online is another name for it.
What is Power BI Embedded?
You may use Power BI embedded analytics to embed reports, dashboards, and tiles from Power BI in a web application or a website. You may provide engaging data experiences for your end-users with Power BI embedded analytics, allowing them to take action based on insights from your solution data.
By leveraging and branding Power BI as your own, users may build customer-facing reports, dashboards, and analytics in their apps with Power BI Embedded. Power BI Embedded may also help developers save time and money by automating analytics monitoring, administration, and deployment while maintaining complete control over Power BI features and intelligent analytics.
The Embedded one has two sub-solutions: Embedded for customers and Embedded for businesses.
With the "embed for your clients" approach, you may create a Power BI app that leverages non-interactive authentication. External users are most likely your clients and don't need to log in using Power BI credentials to access the integrated material. Independent software providers (ISVs) who build third-party apps typically employ this approach.
The "embed for your company" option lets you create an app that requires Power BI credentials to sign in. Users can only consume embedded material they can access on the Power BI service once they have signed in.
This solution is intended for large enterprises that are developing an internal app.
The Differences Between Power BI and Power BI Embedded
The phrase "Power BI service" refers to a collection of analytics tools based on business intelligence capabilities. Power BI, according to Microsoft, is a business analytics technology that enables users to see critical business data in a customized and graphic manner throughout the whole enterprise.
On the other hand, the embedded one is part of the Power BI suite of analytics tools. The tool allows application developers to integrate Power BI components into existing applications across the user organization's internal systems.
Power BI has two price models: Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium. In the per-user per month arrangement, Power BI Pro costs $13.70. The monthly cost of Power BI Premium per user is $27.50, while the monthly cost of Power BI Premium per capacity is $6,858.10.
On the other hand, the entire cost structure of Power BI Embedded is determined by the kind of nodes chosen by the user firm and the total number of nodes installed. Unfortunately, the cost of either can be pretty steep for the lack of user-friendliness and tools that you get.
Power BI's analytics tools bridge the gap between organizational data and decision-making by utilizing predictive analytics. Alternatively, user firms may leverage the analytics expertise of Power BI Embedded products and benefit from Microsoft's ongoing investment in analytics and artificial intelligence.
When it comes down to it, there are some significant disadvantages to using Power BI for embedded analytics. There are many roadblocks regarding multi-tenant security, branding, and customer portal access.
Just as well, Power BI Embedded has its downfalls in terms of embedded analytics as well. It has a very crowded user interface, and the average user may find the learning curve too steep. The platform is not as fast as other platforms that handle large amounts of data calculation.
For developers looking for a solid embedded analytics solution, it may be worth looking into alternatives outside the Power BI tech stack.
How Can Yurbi Help?
Cost, complexity, and branding are common reasons businesses look for alternatives to Power BI, especially when it comes to embedded use cases.
Yurbi is a viable alternative to Power BI Embedded.
Wait, what's Yurbi?
Yurbi is one of the rising stars in the embedded analytics segment. Yurbi provides the same results as Power BI but at a fraction cost.
- Yurbi is an on-premise/self-hosted BI solution, so while you can deploy Yurbi in your Azure infrastructure, you can also decide to deploy Yurbi on AWS, or anywhere else you choose.
- The Yurbi interface is 100% HTML/JavaScript, which makes it easy to brand and customize to white label and blend seamlessly into your application.
- Yurbi has a complete backend API so that you can automate all the everyday things from user provisioning, seamless sign-on, custom visualizations, and much more.
- Yurbi was designed for business users, so if you have a requirement to open up a report building to your customers, you can do that (and it doesn't cost any extra in our pricing model).
And speaking of pricing, Yurbi offers one of the best pricing models in the embedded industry. Check it out here.
What are you waiting for? Schedule a meeting with us to discuss what more we can offer to the table, or book a live demo session for free to see it with your own eyes. Either way, we'll be waiting!