Power BI Premium License: A Detailed Overview

Power BI Premium is an enterprise-grade licensing option in Power BI designed for organizations that need more resources, performance, and advanced capabilities than Power BI Pro. It provides dedicated cloud resources and advanced features, making it ideal for large-scale deployments and organizations with complex reporting requirements. 

1. Dedicated Capacity and Enhanced Performance

• Power BI Premium provides dedicated capacity rather than shared resources, meaning each organization gets its own set of resources for Power BI workloads.
• This dedicated capacity helps improve performance, especially with large datasets, and prevents issues that may arise from using shared cloud resources.

2. Advanced Data Model Capabilities

• Larger Data Models: Power BI Premium allows data models up to 400 GB (compared to 1 GB for Pro), suitable for larger and more complex datasets.
• Incremental Refresh: Premium enables incremental data refresh, which refreshes only the updated data rather than reloading the entire dataset, saving time and improving performance.

3. AI and Advanced Analytics

• AI Features: Power BI Premium offers AI features like text analytics, image recognition, and automated machine learning (AutoML) models directly within Power BI.
• Cognitive Services: You can integrate cognitive services like language detection, sentiment analysis, and key phrase extraction directly in Power BI reports.

4. Paginated Reports

• Premium supports paginated reports (.rdl files) designed for highly detailed, print-ready reports often used for invoicing, financial statements, and other formatted reporting needs.
• Paginated reports are especially useful when you need pixel-perfect reporting capabilities, not achievable in regular Power BI reports.

5. Enhanced Dataflow Capabilities

• Power BI Premium enables computed entities and linked entities in dataflows, which are useful for transforming data at scale.
• Dataflow Storage: Premium provides enhanced storage in Azure Data Lake, which allows for better integration with other Azure data services.

6. Increased Refresh Limits and Scheduling

• With Power BI Premium, you get up to 48 scheduled refreshes per day (compared to 8 for Pro), providing better support for near-real-time data needs.
• This allows more flexibility in scheduling refreshes to accommodate organizational demands for more up-to-date data.

7. Per-User or Per-Capacity Licensing Options

• Premium Per User (PPU): This is a new, lower-cost option where users can get Premium features individually at a per-user cost.
• Premium Per Capacity: An organization-wide capacity-based license that enables Premium features across all users in an organization, including free Power BI users (view-only access).

8. Enhanced Security and Compliance Features

• Data Encryption: Power BI Premium includes Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) encryption for datasets, allowing organizations to manage their own encryption keys.
• Multi-Geo Support: Premium allows data residency controls, where organizations can choose where their data is stored geographically to meet compliance needs.

9. Deployment Pipelines for Development and Testing

• Premium includes deployment pipelines for Dev, Test, and Production environments, allowing you to better manage report lifecycle processes.
• It simplifies version control and helps manage report changes and updates with minimal disruption.

10. Unlimited Content Sharing

• Premium enables unlimited sharing of reports, dashboards, and apps with free Power BI users within the organization, so a company does not have to buy individual Pro licenses for everyone to view content.

Power BI Premium Pricing

• Premium Per User: Costs around $20 per user per month and provides Premium features on a per-user basis, ideal for smaller teams needing premium features.
• Premium Per Capacity: Starts from around $4,995 per capacity per month, designed for larger organizations needing a capacity-based solution.

Choosing Power BI Premium

Power BI Premium is ideal for organizations needing:

• High-performance, large-scale analytics.
• Advanced analytics and AI capabilities.
• Increased data model size and dataflow features.
• Enhanced security, compliance, and governance.

Power BI Premium can be a cost-effective way to provide organization-wide access to Power BI's advanced features and is well-suited for companies with complex reporting needs and substantial user bases.