I had been an enthusiast of Power BI from the Data Explorer and GeoFlow times. How these components evolved into a “suite” of add-ins for Excel and then to integrate with Office 365 SharePoint sites, along with a couple of flings with SharePoint was an interesting journey to follow. The potential that Power Query and Power Pivot carried, made a lot of people want more out of Power BI than just a set of Excel add-ins coupled with Office 365 support.
That prayer has now been answered. Since last week the next generation of Power BI is generally available. The new Power BI is a web-based portal (no, not on Office 365) with a complimentary/complementary desktop application. Along with this you get a whole bag of goodies — It’s an entity of its own and no longer depends on Excel.
The Power BI blog on MSDN explains more, I’m going to have fun with this!
Data Maul 