Microsoft Cloud BI Update 2013

I've been blogging about cloud BI and the advantages and possibilities of cloud-based business intelligence for IT and business knowledge users for a number of years now. Up until July 2013, I had put together only hybrid solutions using the entire Microsoft stack. I described that same "hybrid" on-prem and cloud model right here on the SQL Server Pro blog almost the same time one year ago.

But this announcement from the Microsoft Office News blog shows that Microsoft is doing more than just putting "Power" in front of every BI product name ... Julia White also describes the evolution of the products that were named "Geoflow" and "Data Explorer" in previous beta iterations have been renamed and, along with "Power View" and "Power Pivot" <-- (now with a space!) are available in the cloud with Excel in Office 365.