"5 seconds to sign up. 5 minutes to wow!" So read a banner that Microsoft hung up in 2014 when it began development of its Power BI service. It would be a SaaS-based business intelligence and analytics service to enable business users to directly connect with and gain insight from their business data.
Power BI was released to general availability in July after an intensive seven-month preview, and it was business-user friendly, as promised. "I think this is huge," wrote Seeking Alpha's Dallas Salazar, who observed that Microsoft wanted Power BI to be "the platform for business intelligence across both SMB and enterprise deployment."