[Lillie Berry]

Hello,

We are looking to upgrade from BC13 private tenant to the most recent BC release on the public cloud and are wondering how people on the public cloud manage their data? Do you use PowerBI, Jet Reports, do you copy your data to a data warehouse? We specifically have external data (i.e. freight data, historical data from previous finance system, etc.) that we would like to house on the same server since we oftentimes append information from external sources on to our BC data for analysis. Currently we have a SQL server through our consultants that manage our private tenant where I am able to create new databases and load static historical information (sales history from old system, freight history, etc.) but that will go away when we move to the public cloud.

Thank you!

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Lillie Berry
Brew Dr. Kombucha
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[Michael Intravartolo]

Hi Lillie,

If you have a lot of data, numerous data sources, and un-scrubbed data then connecting Power BI to a Data Warehouse to manage your data is a really good option, and would allow you to use Power BI’s Direct Query function and utilize the Business Central integrations. If you don’t have a lot of data then connecting Power BI to a Data Warehouse might be a little overkill. 

I personally tend to prefer Power BI over Jet Reports but that being said, I’ve seen many instances where organizations have utilized both Jet Reports and Power BI together. 

Best of luck!

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Michael Intravartolo
Marketing Manager
Solution Systems, Inc.
Rolling Meadows, IL
michael@solsyst.com
847-590-3000
http://www.solsyst.com

A Shot of Business Central and A Beer Podcast: http://www.solsyst.com/podcast
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[Lillie Berry]

Thank you Michael,

Are you on the public cloud? Do you use a Data Warehouse that pulls in BC data in addition to other data sources or since you use PowerBI are you relying on PBI to connect to BC and your other data sources separately?

Thanks so much!

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Lillie Berry
ERP Systems Analyst
Brew Dr. Kombucha
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[Michael Intravartolo]

You’re very welcome Lillie. Full disclosure, I am employed by a Microsoft Partner that deals with Power BI, Business Central, etc. so I’ve had the opportunity to see many different scenarios. For me personally (marketing role) I rely on PBI to connect to BC and my other data sources. I don’t have any issues with refreshes taking too long or really anything else but then again I’m not pulling in 20+ years of historical data. My recommendation would be to have a quick call with your BC Partner and a Power BI partner so they can really get a full scope of your needs and make the best recommendation. 

Best of luck!

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Michael Intravartolo
Marketing Manager
Solution Systems, Inc.
Rolling Meadows, IL
michael@solsyst.com
847-590-3000
http://www.solsyst.com

A Shot of Business Central and A Beer Podcast: http://www.solsyst.com/podcast
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[Bob Stahr]

Lillie,
When you say that you are: “create[ing] new databases and load static historical information (sales history from old system, freight history, etc.) but that will go away when we move to the public cloud.” that sounds like you have reporting requirements that you are now doing now to combine data from NAV/BC with other data — you have started down the path toward a DataWarehouse, and you’ll want to build this so it can grow and maintain it’s self.

I would highly recommend you involve your partner to help you migrate these to a power BI environment.  Make sure all reporting requirements are defined and shared even if you are doing most of the work.   The “Static” data you mentioned could be linked and stay put but replicating it to the cloud will probably be the best/safest/most performant way to go in the long run. 

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-Bob*
Bob Stahr
BTC – Business Technology Consulting  | http://bit.ly/wwwbtc
bob@stahr.us
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[Benji Jasik]

is anyone doing warehousing in the cloud across multiple companies?  We are on BC14 upgrading to BC17 soon and using ZapBI mostly to flatten all the companies and their tables into single tables to report across companies.  When we move to cloud my understanding is we need to build this warehouse via web services vs sql and I don’t have a good path to that (yet)

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Benji Jasik
Generate Capital
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