Better user experience (UX), AI and embedded analytics will be the three pillars of the Power BI platform development in the future.
During Microsoft’s Inspire conference last month, Arun Ulagaratchagan outlined the Power BI development strategy. Arun is Corporate Vice President of the Business Intelligence Platform at Microsoft.
Going forward, Power BI developers will focus on the following three focal points. First, Power BI will get better UX. Second, developers plan to introduce more AI. And third, Power BI will embed easier with other Microsoft tools.
Having said that, the plan is to make Power BI UX even more functional and visually pleasing. Generally, the goal is to make Power BI as easy to use and visually similar to Excel and PowerPoint.
“This is the beating heart of Power BI, the ability to get beautiful insights that are very simple for the end user to consume,” Arun said.
Power BI’s move toward AI
Power BI has already done significant improvements to its AI features this year. For example, in May, Microsoft added the smart narratives feature. To learn more, please read our article on benefits of reporting using the smart narratives feature.
After that Microsoft introduced AI features in Power Query. These features give users more opportunities to improve data preparation with machine learning.
Finally, Microsoft will improve Power BI’s embedding options. Developers want to improve Power BI’s ability to blend with Azure Synapse Analytics, Excel and other Office 365 tools.
In conclusion, the ultimate goal is to help companies develop a proper data-driven culture and embrace analytics. Amid the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies are struggling to stay afloat. In these challenging times, the use of business intelligence tools can help businesses survive.
“That’s how we think about a data culture,” Arun said.
Arun summed up: “Helping customers create a data culture is about helping everyone in the organizations make better decisions with data. It’s about everyone, and all the decisions they make, the ability to harness all of the data and translate that into insight to drive your business forward.”