Deploying Power BI in the enterprise. Lessons learned. May 2018

About me Johan Ludvig Brattås Managing consultant, Capgemini Johan-ludvig.brattas@capgemini.com Twitter: @intoleranse Organizing SQLSaturday Oslo Excel BI virtual group lead

Agenda What is enterprise ready? And why Power BI? Different approaches to deployment On-premise or as a service? Where are your data sources, and how to do governance Security Collaboration and sharing Tracking report usage and statistics What is Premium tier and why should you use it?

What is “enterprise ready”? And why Power BI? EVITAR usar o spada branco – tem que ser sempre o colorido.

What is “Enterprise ready” really? “We haven't tested this in an environment anywhere near as large and complex as yours but we are crossing our fingers and hoping it will scale to your requirements” Has the capacity to handle complex environments with large amount of users with demands such as Single sign-on Access control Audit logging Integrations to various data sources Scalability SLA and support Source control and change management

The current case Etablished enterprise data warehouse since 2006 6 Multi-dimensional SSAS cubes 10+ tabular model SSAS A number of data marts in MS SQL Server 70+ reports in SSRS (no good historical usage tracking) 30+ Excel pivot files on Sharepoint 3 dashboards in DataZen (test case for new reporting) 3100 employees

Why Power BI? Does Power BI have: Single sign-on Access control Yes Audit logging Integrations with various data sources Scalability SLA and support Source control and change managment Yes Definately Err…

Why Power BI? Administration features still needs love, but getting there Cumbersome gateway administration Workspace administration No source control support for PBIX

On-premise or as a service?

Power BI as a service Main service – powerbi.com Updated monthly Automatically patched and tuned Shared hosting

Power BI Report Server Introduced May, 2017 Only available for Power Bi Premium tier, and for SQL Server Enterprise with SA. Full Power BI experience Only updates 3 times a year. Update only supported for 12 months Custom Power BI Desktop

We chose SAAS Why? Partially since Power BI Report server not available when we started the project… Data warehouse already in less restricted security zone Enable easy sharing of data with external customers Users spread out over the whole country Less strain on infrastructure Costs – saved a lot of money on licensing

Different approaches to deployment EVITAR usar o spada branco – tem que ser sempre o colorido.

Business-driven self service A.K.A. Land and expand Often used tactic among “self-service BI” tools. Bottom-up approach Pure self-service, typically run by analysts No, to little IT involvement Development and “support” by the users

Business-driven self service Challenges with this mode: Often little knowledge of data modelling Inconsistent quality

Business-driven self service Challenges with this mode: Often little knowledge of data modelling Inconsistent quality Support of reports takes time and focus away from more important tasks “Power BI hell – the new Excel hell”

Business-driven self service Challenges with this mode: Often little knowledge of data modelling Inconsistent quality Support of reports takes time and focus away from more important tasks “Power BI hell – the new Excel hell” No single version of the truth

Business-driven self service Advantages with this mode: High user adoption Fast time to market Higher degree of innovation and discovery

Corporate BI Top-down approach. IT develops and maintains solution Business users only consume available reports and dashboards Little to no involvement by business

Corporate BI Challenges with this mode: Slow development-process Low adoption rate by business Retro-active reporting, less innovation

Corporate BI Advantages with this mode: Good data models Consistent reporting – “one version of the truth” Company profiled reports and dashboards Dedicated support Controlled release and versioning of reports

IT-Managed self-service The hybrid solution. IT-driven, but with “champions” selling solution to business Champions deliver business projects to IT for development IT delivers qualified data sources and data models for self service Successful business created reports are tested, tuned and adopted by IT All adopted reports are fully supported by IT

We chose hybrid A success. BI-team has a dedicated analyst “selling” to business. Initial roll-out started with training and enabling super-users. Subsequent waves of training on use of powerbi.com out everywhere – even on remote locations Perhaps too much success? BI-team increased to 12 people, from 7

Where are your data sources and how to do governance EVITAR usar o spada branco – tem que ser sempre o colorido.

Where are your data sources? Allready cloud ready? Power BI supports a huge number of cloud sources. For example: Azure SQL DB Azure Analysis Services Azure Data Lake Onedrive for Business AWS Redshift Spark +++

Where are your data sources? On-premise? Your enterprise data warehouse Multi-dimensional as well as tabular SSAS Your local MS SQL Server Other RDBMS like Oracle or Sybase File share Sharepoint?

Where are your data sources? Connection to PowerBI.com from on-premise via data gateway. Resides locally, preferably on a server. Managed in the cloud. Each data source needs to be maintained manually All users that need to create reports off a data source must be specified Account to authenticate to data sources, but impersonates users

Where are our data sources? In the beginning – all our data where on-premise Data gateway was set up, but struggled with configuration Proxy set-up with changes in config-files of app-folder Challenge with security demand for developers using elevated user-access (no e-mail on elevated user) Proxy setting creating problems with reports having on-premise AND cloud sources However: Data Gateway over regular internet (and proxy) works remarkably well. (Don’t ask why we’re not using express route…) We didn’t plan flat file source placement No Onedrive for business, only file share.

Security

Security in a hybrid enviroment Azure Active Directory services (ADFS) Multi-Factor Authentication Security groups RLS in cubes or imported models Only approved users can publish reports based on internal data sources

Collaboration and sharing

App Workspaces Default collaboration tool in Power BI are the workspaces Part O365, and part Power BI Improved administration of workspaces over the last year. Separation of Power BI Admin role from O365-admin helped. Still an extra step to manage groups and membership Workspace allows users to share dashboards and reports. Initially, all users could make copies and edit. Now, group admin can control what’s allowed. Users need pro-licence to access workspaces

Content packs Deprecated feature in Power BI. Used to be best way to share dashboards and reports without managing workspaces Problematic ownership control

Apps Started off as a Premium feature Replacing content packs as best way to share dashboards and reports in the organization. Read-only content. No need to administer workspace membership RLS is still valid in apps Need pro-license, unless Premium capacity

The way we work Workspaces are used as staging areas, and testing-grounds One workspace per business area or business practice Only developers and super-users have access to workspaces Except: Analysts sharing unofficial reports and dashboards do so via workspaces. The rest of the users access reports and dashboards via apps Power BI Desktop for development. However, Power BI Desktop is available for all users to install via Software Center

Tracking report statistics and usage

Tracking usage Powershell script pulls Power BI logs from service daily. SSIS for ETL and – for now – aligning with SSRS report statistics Power BI dashboard and reports for Power BI and SSRS

What is Premium, and why should you use it?

What is Premium? Regular Power BI as a service is shared hosting Premium Power BI is dedicated capacity/hardware Embedded Power BI on premium capacity Power BI report server on Premium capacity (or Enterprise MS SQL Server with s.a.) Access to apps demands pro-licence on shared hosting, but not on Premium With a few exceptions, such as “analyze in Excel” Publishing and editing in shared workspaces is still pro-license on Premium Premium P1 from a pure cost-perspective is beneficial from 500+ users

QUESTIONS?

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