My work is more about providing security solutions for about three years, making this service available to end users.
My scope of work involves making the Power BI solution available as a general product to end users, ensuring that relevant security solutions are enabled from an identity perspective, licensing perspective, and from data loss prevention (DLP) and data protection perspective.
I work for a bank, so we are a customer of these services. We serve internal customers by making these solutions available.
Power BI can connect to various data sources. Depending on the business users, some may be using it along with their Excel sheets. The data source could be just the Excel sheet or a comma-separated values (CSV) file, where they receive data in that format from whichever application it is, and then they feed it into Power BI.
Based on the business, they would have created analytic reports, and they are able to produce insightful analytic reports on the fly, based on management, end user, or stakeholder requirements.
Users connect to the data source, which could be coming from SQL, Excel sheets, their own applications like SaaS applications, internal HR solutions, the intranet, etc. Different business users use it for different purposes to make Power BI connect to the data source and generate the required reports.
For our bank itself, there are various tools used by different business users. Some people use MicroStrategy; some use Cognos or its next product. We wanted to have one common tool that any business user can use for analytics.
Power BI, once made available, can connect to various data sources, irrespective of the application, whether it be HR or business applications. The bank has many applications, but all eventually need to generate reports for tracking, distribution, or problem-finding based on analysis. Power BI was made available as part of the productivity suite to all businesses, which can connect to their applications and provide the reports and analysis they require.
So, it's more of a strategic tool for the bank to consolidate different siloed business analytic tools with Power BI, serving everyone in the business regardless of what applications they use; they can use Power BI to generate reports.
Power BI also offers mobile app benefits for data access and analysis. The mobile app is available but only in read mode. We are a bank, so there are specific data protection capabilities required to make this available for use on mobile. However, it is already part of the BI suite, and it is easy for us to roll out using Intune.
Intune is another product we use to manage applications on mobile devices. It can protect data in case someone tries to copy it out. While Power BI has a mobility function, the bank has to ensure that the right protection technology is available. Microsoft Intune integrates very well, allowing us to apply protection policies, but at this point in time, it has not been rolled out.