The Power BI service is available in the cloud, allowing your users to access content from anywhere through device-specific mobile apps, a web browser, or customized portals. This allows your users to use data effectively wherever they are located. Access to content can be constrained to users within the organization or it may also include access for authorized external partners, customers, and vendors which you allow to be a guest user.

Once you have decided to use Power BI, the Power BI service can be up and running for your organization very quickly – usually within a few minutes. The Power BI service includes data storage and connectivity to services such as Dynamics and Salesforce – this allows business users to quickly start using certain data sources for making decisions without waiting for IT to provision data sources or integrate data. As a cloud service, Microsoft handles all maintenance, updates, and patching activities. It is also natively integrated with Azure Active Directory, so users and groups are unified.

User-based licensing options for the Power BI service are based on a monthly subscription. Even when an organization chooses to incorporate additional paid capabilities, such as Power BI Premium, the up-front costs are significantly less than a server-based approach which requires purchasing and provisioning server hardware and software. As usage of Power BI grows, you can purchase additional licenses and services to support the expansion.