Microsoft has announced a significant shift in its analytics ecosystem by retiring Power BI Premium (P-SKU) and replacing it with Microsoft Fabric Capacity (F-SKU). This transition marks a new era for organisations leveraging Power BI Premium, as they will need to migrate to Microsoft Fabric to continue accessing advanced analytics capabilities. Below, we explore the transition process, implications, and benefits of this change.
How Will the Transition Work?
Microsoft has outlined a structured migration plan to help organisations move from Power BI Premium to Microsoft Fabric seamlessly by offering a grace period for those who are yet to transition:
90-Day Grace Period: After the expiration of a Power BI Premium contract, organisations will have 90 days to complete the migration.
30 Days of Free Capacity: During the first 30 days, Microsoft will provide a free equivalent Fabric capacity to ensure uninterrupted operations.
Organisations must reassign their Power BI workspaces to the new Fabric capacity. Microsoft offers both manual migration options and automated tools with REST APIs for bulk workspace reassignment.
Failing to migrate within the mentioned timeframe can lead to unwanted consequences that will have a knock-on effect on your operations, such as the Power BI’s performance degrading after 30 days and the complete data loss after 90 days. Therefore, it will be important for your company to make sure that it prevents a data loss that could be catastrophic.
Benefits of Microsoft Fabric Capacity over Power BI Premium
Now that you are aware of the importance of migrating in time, Microsoft Fabric introduces several enhancements over Power BI Premium, which all point to why this is an important migration to make:
- Secure Azure Integration:
Fabric integrates directly with Azure services, enabling advanced governance features such as trusted workspaces and managed private endpoints. It is eligible for the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC), allowing organisations to optimise costs.
- Expanded Capabilities:
The new platform supports workloads beyond traditional business intelligence, including data engineering (Spark), real-time analytics, and AI-driven insights. Features like DirectLake eliminate the need for importing data into datasets, leading to more streamlined workflows.
- Flexible Pricing Models:
Pay-as-you-go pricing and dynamic scaling options have been introduced to allow businesses to adjust resources based on demand.
- Unified Platform:
It consolidates tools like Power BI, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Data Factory into a single environment for seamless data management and analytics.
Factors to Consider for Businesses Migrating from Power BI Premium
There are some important aspects of the migration that will help you understand the impact of Microsoft Fabric on your organisation, such as information about Power BI Embed and more, which we will explore now.
One of the standout features of Microsoft Fabric is its DirectLake functionality, which will still allow you to work directly with data without importing it into Power BI datasets
Additionally, Power BI Premium remains a cornerstone of Microsoft Fabric, with all its existing features fully supported. However, while all existing features of Power BI Premium are included in Microsoft Fabric, additional capabilities such as AI-driven analytics and real-time pipelines are exclusive to Fabric, giving organisations even more operating power.
For organisations using Power BI Embedded, it’s important to note that this functionality is supported within specific capacities of Microsoft Fabric. It will be important to look into the licensing and integration plans during migration to ensure that your operations are not negatively affected.
Finally, Power BI Pro licenses remain unaffected by this transition. However, larger-scale analytics initiatives will require migrating to Fabric capacities for advanced functionalities.
Why Choose Integrove for Your Migration?
Integrove plays an important role in assisting your organisation to navigate this transition with ease by offering comprehensive assessment services to evaluate the current Power BI Premium usage and identify the best migration strategies, alongside providing workspace migration support through automated tools and phased rollouts to minimise disruption. Additionally, we deliver tailored training and enablement programmes to prepare teams for Microsoft Fabric’s expanded technical requirements, including essential skills and helping you optimise your operational costs by leveraging MACC eligibility and pay-as-you-go pricing models for efficient resource management. Partnering with Integrove not only ensures a smooth transition but also helps you discover the full potential of Microsoft Fabric.
Microsoft laying Power BI Premium to bed is a shift toward companies using a unified data ecosystem with Microsoft Fabric. While this change may seem like a lot at first, it offers multiple benefits in terms of scalability, flexibility, and advanced analytics capabilities. Organisations should prioritise early migration planning to avoid disruptions and take advantage of new opportunities offered by Microsoft Fabric.
