In the 2010s, we used to have the Excel Add-ins to perform simple data transformation (Power Query), data modeling and analysis (Power Pivot), and data visualizations (Power View, and Power Map). I called them the “Power Suite”.

Then a bottleneck was reached, as the largest rows of data allowed in Excel is 1 million rows, and you would be out of luck if you extract tens of, or hundreds of millions of rows of data you want to analyze.

Now in July 2015, a completely new but powerful platform was born that incorporated all the tools in the “Power Suite” as I called. It exists independent of Microsoft Excel and yet allows for hundreds of millions or even more data rows to process in a shorter period of time. This means that people do not have to own Excel in order to use Power BI.

And the biggest win is that it is FREE! Seriously, it is free! Microsoft only charges nominal monthly fees for sharing dashboards online.

So what are you waiting for?! Let’s see what Power BI, equipped with all of the 4 components of the “Power Suite”, can do for us!

Did I mention that Power BI is the first dashboard software to incorporate Artificial Intelligence to create visuals or charts for you when all you need is to type English words telling it what to chart??!!