The following comparison table captures the features, limitations, use cases, price, and scalability between Azure Analysis Services, Power BI, Power BI Embedded, and Power BI Premium:
1. Azure Analysis Services (AAS)
Specification: AAS manages an end-to-end enterprise platform for building the models of semantic data. It can do highly complex modeling tasks using tabular models. It can directly query through real-time analytics.
Use cases: There is a great requirement for data modeling, centralized data storage, and integration with a number of reports-enabled tools, including Excel, Power BI, and other third-party BI platforms.
Limitations: Only for data modeling with no direct visualization; requires high proficiency in DAX data modeling.
Pricing: On-demand pricing services on one of the three tiers, including Developer, Basic, or Standard, and by the size of instance.
Scalability: High scalability to accommodate the processing of large datasets and complex calculations, but limited to the model processing.
2. Power BI
Specifications: It's an all-in-one analytics tool that supports data visualization modeling and sharing insights further through Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service cloud sharing, and Power BI Mobile.
Use Cases: Best for single analysts or teams wishing to create, share, and consume reports with simple built-in interactivity.
Limitations: Free accounts may only store datasets of 1 GB in size; advanced features will typically require Pro or Premium licensing.
Pricing: Free basic use; $10/user/month for Power BI Pro; must have Premium for enterprise features.
Scalability: Small to medium dataset; Premium increases capacity for larger datasets and complex scenarios.
3. Power BI Embedded: A service tailored specifically for embedding Power BI reports and dashboards into custom applications. It naturally features APIs for seamless application and customization.
Use Cases: Perfect for developers who want to embed analytics into their applications and SaaS without requiring any end-user licenses of Power BI.
Limitations: Focuses on embedding only and does not have any broader analytics capability for end-to-end BI.
Pricing: Usage-based on pay per session and render with no per-user licensing. It is very highly scalable for embedding use cases and supporting different concurrent users.
4. Power BI Premium: Authoritative analytics for the enterprise, with even larger dataset sizes of up to 400GB, paginated reports, and all AI features. Core computing resources and features, such as on-premises reporting through the Power BI Report Server, are dedicated.
Use Cases: Perfect for enterprises requiring extensive scalability, great deals of datasets, incremental refresh, and rich AI functionalities or sharing on an enterprise level.
Limitation: It gives a higher price than any other tier and needs to be managed sufficiently for capacity.
Pricing: $4,995/month per capacity. Premium Per User (PPU) costs around $20/user/month.
Scalability: Extremely high. Supporting big datasets with a certain number of concurrent users due to dedicated capacity.
Best Solution Picking: Azure Analysis Services is the best choice for organizations that want to build data models for centralized and reusable access. Power BI is the definite choice for teams that need wide, highly user-friendly BI. Power BI Embedded is for the developers who embed reports in applications. Power BI Premium is the choice for high-end enterprise-level analytics that are highly large and with feature-rich properties. The choice would depend on the business need - user access, dataset size, embedding, advanced modeling aspects, etc.
