Reporting in the cloud—Power BI

Historically, reporting in SQL Server on-premises has been handled by SQL Server Reporting Services. Over time it has had only minor increments in capability and enhancements. More recently it has been broken out of the main product as a separate download. This has been in tandem with the introduction and rapid expansion in the capability of Power BI Report Server, which is the next generation of on-premises reporting capability.

When making the decision about whether to install Reporting Services (SSRS) or Power BI Report Server (PBIRS), or to leverage the Power BI cloud service, it is important to understand the pros and cons of each option. While the Power BI service provides out-of-the-box high availability, huge scalability, and easy access for developers and information consumers, it does come with the downside of ceding control of feature and product update schedules to Microsoft. Contrast this with the VM IaaS deployment, where we have...