More Power BI Licensing Details

At the end of last week I came across an interesting link on Twitter (thanks Devin) with more details on how the ‘new’ Power BI will be licensed, and how existing Power BI subscribers will move to the new experience, that I thought was worth highlighting. Here it is:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/powerBI/licensing.aspx?utm_content=bufferfe7e5

Some points to highlight:

• The Power BI service will become a standalone service and will no longer require SharePoint Online
  This is not exactly a surprise based on what’s been announced so far, but it’s the first time it’s been clearly stated that the ‘new’ Power BI is not dependent on Office 365 and SharePoint Online
• At general availability of the new experience, existing customers will be asked to move to the new experience
  That’s to say the ‘new’ Power BI is a direct replacement for the old, O365-based Power BI, and that there will only be a single version – the ‘new’ version – of Power BI in the future
• Power BI will seamlessly work with Office 365 for customer with subscriptions to both
  and
  This move will require configuring the new experience to connect to existing Excel workbooks. Users will need to either point to their Excel workbooks on SharePoint Online or reload these workbooks into Power BI
  If you are an existing Office 365/SharePoint Online/Power BI customer, there will be integration between SharePoint Online and the new Power BI service – so it looks like no functionality is going to be lost in the transition
• Existing Power BI for Office 365 customers will be able to transition from the existing user experience to the new user experience when it is made available using their existing subscription license…
  This license transition should not interrupt access to the Power BI service.
  So existing customers should be able to move to the ‘new’ Power BI very easily when it is released (remember, we’re currently in preview and the preview of the cloud service is only available to US customers)

If you’re a new customer thinking of signing up for the ‘new’ Power BI, you should check out the licensing options here:
http://www.powerbi.com/dashboards/pricing/

…and also this post on the Power BI support blog on making sure you sign up to the service with the appropriate email address:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/powerbisupport/archive/2015/02/06/power-bi-sign-up-walkthrough.aspx