Using BI Office Together with Microsoft Power BI Desktop to Unlock Business Insights

In my previous blog post, Why It’s Important to Unlock Business Insights Trapped on Individual Desktops, I talked about what it takes to be a truly data-driven enterprise. Business leaders must extend the capabilities of self-service business intelligence (BI) and analytics to more business users. And it’s crucial to move away from data and analytics stored on individual desktop computers. Today’s solutions must promote holistic, collective intelligence. The strong, continued alliance between Microsoft and Pyramid Analytics helps make all this possible.

Now available: Publish to Pyramid Server functionality in Power BI Desktop

Pyramid Analytics has partnered with Microsoft to join the personal-productivity capabilities of Microsoft Power BI Desktop with the secure, governed, enterprise solution of Pyramid Analytics’ BI Office—via Publish to Pyramid Server functionality in Power BI Desktop. And if organizations want to keep data and content on-premises, Publish to Pyramid Server functionality makes it easy.

Let’s take a closer look at how using Power BI Desktop together with BI Office enables powerful, on-premises, data discovery, while delivering an end-to-end, integrated, and governed enterprise solution.

Staying on-premises vs. using public cloud solutions

Many organizations can’t use public cloud solutions because of security concerns, administrative challenges or functional limitations. Yet, to really be data-driven, these organizations need a centralized platform where users can perform self-service analytics in an IT-enabled environment.

With BI Office, organizations can maximize Microsoft BI investments on-premises, reduce security concerns, improve manageability and give deeper insights—on a Web-based, on-premises platform.

Publish directly into BI Office, with Publish to Pyramid Server

With the new, jointly developed, Publish to Pyramid Server functionality in Power BI Desktop, users can publish Power BI Desktop content directly into BI Office in a governed, secure, server-based environment. They can publish reports and visualizations to a centralized, IT-enabled repository. And data from multiple sources is integrated in a single location, with consistent business logic.

Original content from Power BI Desktop is exported to Pyramid, where it’s stored for inclusion in a BI Office dashboard.

This collaborative Power BI Desktop and BI Office solution makes it possible for every user and decision maker across an organization to keep their content, reports and data models on-premises or in private clouds, and to safely publish and share content using our BI Office server-based solution. The result is a win for businesses everywhere that are ready for an integrated analytics workflow that speeds their ability to compete as data-driven organizations. And the benefits don’t stop there.

Capitalize on Microsoft BI investments with BI Office

Using Microsoft SQL Server as a best-in-class, back-end analytics database—along with BI Office on the front end—bolsters the value of existing Microsoft BI investments.

Reduce security concerns

Users can securely reuse consistent IT-provisioned business logic, business rules and data models. Because of this governed framework, they can unlock and share trusted content and insights.

Improve manageability

Administrators can manage access to Power BI Desktop content with enterprise-level security and governance.

Provide deeper, bigger-picture analytics

Get the whole picture, not just isolated fragments, by easily blending analytics content from many data sources—including in-memory or cubes, SQL Server Reporting Services and any Web-enabled content.

By using Power BI Desktop and BI Office together, you get a governed, secure, enterprise solution and personal productivity. It’s easy to collaborate, integrate, share and publish content on-premises or in the private cloud, and to unlock insights that might otherwise be trapped on individual computers.

Related resources

Omri Kohl is co-founder and CEO of Pyramid Analytics. A change artist and innovator at heart, he has a successful track record as an entrepreneur managing and growing businesses.