Summary
How enterprise organisations can safely transition from Power BI Premium to Microsoft Fabric whilst optimising costs and minimising disruption
Why Power BI Premium is Going Away
Take the head of analytics at a multinational corporation with thousands of Power BI users across dozens of countries. Your reports drive business decisions, your dashboards monitor real-time operations, and your Premium capacity has been the backbone of your data strategy for years. Then Microsoft announces that Power BI Premium P SKUs are being deprecated, and all existing SKUs must migrate to Microsoft Fabric.
Enterprises globally are facing challenges due to Microsoft's significant changes to its data and analytics platform. Transitioning from Power BI Premium to Microsoft Fabric requires a reevaluation of licensing, costs, and technical infrastructure.
Understanding Microsoft Fabric
Microsoft Fabric functions as a unified analytics platform that encompasses Power BI alongside data engineering, data warehousing, and AI capabilities. Power BI becomes one of the "experiences" within Microsoft Fabric - whilst the core Power BI functionality remains unchanged, the underlying capacity is now a Fabric capacity.
The Licensing Revolution
The most immediate impact affects how you purchase and manage capacity. Power BI Premium P SKUs, which many enterprises have relied upon, are being replaced by Fabric F SKUs purchased through Azure. Understanding the equivalency between your current Premium P SKUs and the necessary Fabric F SKUs becomes essential for planning purposes. The shift fundamentally changes the procurement process, moving from traditional Microsoft licensing channels to Azure consumption models.
Fabric F SKUs replace Premium P SKUs, changing how enterprises purchase analytics capacity.
Key equivalencies to understand:
Premium P SKU | Equivalent Fabric F SKU |
|---|---|
P1 | F64 |
P2 | F128 |
P3 | F256 |
Fabric capacities offer different scaling models, including pay-as-you-go options.
🖐 Plan your licensing transition with expert insight. Learn more: Microsoft Azure Contract Negotiation.
The Hidden Costs and Benefits
One of the most significant changes affects organisations using Power BI Report Server. The dual-use rights that allowed Premium P SKUs to cover both cloud and on-premises deployments are disappearing. Enterprises must now license their on-premises reporting infrastructure separately using SQL Server Enterprise edition per-core licences with Software Assurance, a potentially considerable cost increase. However, it's important to note that whilst Fabric F64+ capacity includes Power BI Report Server licensing, Report Server remains a separate on-premises deployment requiring its own infrastructure and management strategy.
Loss of dual-use rights could significantly impact organisations running Power BI Report Server on-premises.
On the other hand, organisations with Microsoft 365 E5 licences may find unexpected savings. Since E5 includes Power BI Pro, they avoid the 40% price increase affecting standalone Pro licences whilst gaining access to enhanced Fabric capabilities.
A Methodical Migration Framework
Phase 1: Assessment and Discovery
Before making any technical changes, successful migrations begin with a thorough assessment.
Licensing Audit: Begin by cataloguing your entire Power BI estate. Identify all Premium P SKUs, standalone Pro and PPU licences, and any embedded scenarios using A or EM SKUs. Pay particular attention to dual-use implementations that will require separate licensing strategies.
Usage Analysis: Measure your current capacity utilisation patterns. Understanding peak usage times, concurrent user loads, and refresh schedules helps determine appropriate Fabric capacity sizing. Remember that Fabric offers more granular scaling options than traditional Premium capacities.
Workspace Inventory: Audit your workspace structure, identifying which contain only Power BI content versus those that might already be using or could benefit from other Fabric experiences. Workspaces using large semantic model storage formats may require special attention during migration and could need republishing. Pay attention to any workspaces already containing Fabric items like Data Factory or Synapse components, as these create additional migration complexity. Remember that users publishing reports, collaborating, and sharing content in workspaces not assigned to Premium or Fabric capacity will still require valid per-user licences.
Phase 2: Planning and Cost Modelling
The financial implications of Fabric migration extend beyond simple capacity replacement. Enterprises need to model various scenarios to understand the true cost impact. Be aware that for some scenarios, the transition to Fabric licensing might result in higher overall costs.
Capacity Strategy: Choose between pay-as-you-go flexibility and reserved capacity discounts. Reserved capacity offers savings of up to 40.5% with annual commitments (1-year or 3-year options available), whilst PAYG provides operational flexibility for variable workloads. Factor in additional costs beyond compute capacity, including OneLake storage and networking expenses that accompany Fabric implementation.
Reserved capacity can deliver up to 40.5% savings compared to pay-as-you-go pricing.
User Licensing Optimisation: Leverage the fact that F64 and higher capacities allow free Power BI users to consume content without requiring Pro licences. The arrangement can markedly reduce per-user licensing costs for report consumers whilst maintaining Pro requirements for content creators and publishers. Note that Microsoft 365 E3 includes only "Power BI for Microsoft 365" with more limited capabilities than Power BI Pro - E3 organisations requiring full Pro features typically need to purchase Pro licences separately or consider upgrading to E5. For E5 customers, Power BI Premium Per User (PPU) remains available as a $20 monthly add-on per user (contextually, Power BI Pro is valued at $10 per user, making PPU a $10 premium for advanced features).
Regional Considerations: Fabric capacities must be purchased in specific Azure regions. Aligning your Fabric region with existing Power BI regions minimises latency, but organisations with complex regional requirements may need multiple capacities. Define your regional strategy considering data residency requirements, performance needs, and the location of other Azure services you might be using. Workspaces containing Fabric items cannot be automatically moved between Azure regions-these items must be deleted and recreated, making regional planning crucial.
Phase 3: Migration Execution
The technical migration process demands careful orchestration to keep the business running whilst moving to the new platform.
Phased Approach: Large enterprises should avoid "big bang" migrations. Instead, implement a phased approach starting with pilot workspaces, then gradually migrating production environments. The approach allows for testing, issue resolution, and user training without disrupting vital business operations.
Capacity Alignment: Purchase Fabric F SKUs in Azure Portal, ensuring regional alignment with existing Premium regions. The migration process involves moving workspaces from Premium to Fabric capacities, which requires scheduling and coordination to minimise downtime. Plan for recreating scheduled jobs during the transition, as these don't automatically transfer between capacity types.
Data Integration Strategy: Fabric introduces OneLake, a unified data lake that can fundamentally change how organisations approach data storage and integration.
Fabric’s OneLake unifies data storage for analytics, engineering, and AI workloads.
Consider whether migrating data sources to OneLake provides a benefit, particularly for organisations planning to use other Fabric experiences. Be aware that workspaces containing Fabric items cannot be automatically moved between Azure regions - these items must be deleted and recreated, making regional planning crucial. Plan for the effort required to repoint data connections from original sources to Fabric or OneLake, where necessary.
Phase 4: Governance and Optimisation
Post-migration success depends on establishing proper governance and continuously optimising the new environment.
Monitoring and Management: Fabric provides centralised dashboards for capacity monitoring, offering more granular insights than traditional Premium capacities. Establish processes for monitoring utilisation, scaling capacity as needed, and managing costs. Take advantage of Fabric's flexibility to scale compute capacity up or down based on your organisation's changing needs.
🖐 Ensure optimal Azure cost efficiency with Fabric. Learn more: Microsoft Azure Cloud Cost Optimisation.
Advanced Features: Fabric capabilities like Direct Lake mode improve performance, and Copilot integration assists with analytics. Yet these features often require higher capacity tiers (F64 minimum for Copilot), impacting cost calculations. Direct Lake mode offers particular performance benefits for organisations with suitable data infrastructure, providing faster data access compared to traditional import methods. Assess whether your data infrastructure is suitable for Direct Lake implementation. Premium features such as Paginated Reports and higher refresh rates require either Fabric capacity or PPU licences. Fabric also introduces Spark capabilities for advanced data processing and enhanced security through OneLake integration. Understand whether new features or capabilities are exclusively available with Fabric capacities that might benefit your organisation, and evaluate how your existing data sources and data lake strategies will integrate with OneLake.
Key Decision Points for Enterprise Agreements
EA renewal brings unique timing pressures, with several important decisions converging at once:
Timing Considerations
Enterprise Agreement customers often have until their agreement expires to complete the migration, providing some flexibility in timing, but early planning remains essential. Despite this potential flexibility in the EA timeline, begin planning your migration immediately due to the scale of your user base and the potential complexities. The complexity of large-scale migrations means starting the process well before deadlines, particularly for organisations with thousands of users and complex workspace structures.
Embedded Scenarios
Organisations using Power BI Embedded face particular challenges. Lower Fabric capacities (F32 and below) don't support free user consumption, potentially requiring additional Pro licences or capacity upgrades. The limitation can markedly impact the economics of embedded analytics scenarios. Note that whilst Microsoft originally planned to retire Power BI Embedded A SKUs and Premium EM SKUs, these plans have been deprecated and the SKUs remain available.
Cost Management Through MACC
Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) can help offset Fabric costs for organisations with existing Azure commitments.
MACC can offset Fabric costs for organisations with large Azure commitments.
Since Fabric capacities are Azure services, their consumption contributes to MACC targets, potentially providing cost efficiencies for organisations with considerable Azure footprints. Factor in the 40% price increase for standalone Power BI Pro licences and 20% increase for standalone PPU licences at EA renewal in April 2025, though bundled subscriptions like Microsoft 365 E5 avoid these increases.
🖐 Avoid costly licensing pitfalls during migration. Learn more: Microsoft Enterprise Agreement Negotiation.
Preparing for the Future
Moving to Fabric goes beyond maintaining current capabilities. You're positioning for what comes next in analytics. Fabric's unified platform opens up possibilities that standalone Power BI Premium couldn't deliver: seamless data engineering workflows, advanced AI capabilities, and unified governance across your entire analytics stack.
Strategic Advantages
Companies that approach Fabric migration methodically can realise benefits beyond simple feature parity. The platform's ability to scale capacity dynamically, integrate with broader Azure services, and support advanced analytics scenarios gives methodical adopters distinct advantages.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Whilst Microsoft positions migration as straightforward, enterprise-scale transitions involve considerable coordination, testing, and change management.
Fabric items cannot be automatically moved between Azure regions. Companies with strict data residency requirements must plan regional strategies carefully.
Fabric items cannot be automatically moved between Azure regions — regional strategy must be defined before migration.
Fabric introduces new concepts and capabilities that require user education. Invest in training programmes to maximise adoption and value realisation, identifying and utilising available training resources to upskill both Power BI administrators and end-users on Microsoft Fabric specifically. Explore automation tools and scripts that Microsoft or the community provides to assist with migration processes.
Migration Planning Essentials: Develop a comprehensive testing plan to ensure reports, dashboards, and dataflows function correctly on new Fabric capacities. Create a change management and communication plan to inform users about upcoming changes, provide training on new platform aspects, and address concerns. Accurately assess current Premium capacity usage to determine appropriate Fabric F SKUs needed to maintain performance and meet user requirements.
The Path Forward
Microsoft Fabric represents the future of Microsoft's analytics platform, and the deprecation of Power BI Premium P SKUs makes migration inevitable for enterprise customers.
With deliberate planning, Fabric migration can become a strategic advantage — not just a compliance exercise.
However, organisations that approach this transition with deliberate planning can transform a mandatory migration into a competitive advantage.
Success requires understanding the new licensing models, carefully planning capacity requirements, and executing a phased migration that maintains business continuity whilst unlocking new capabilities. For Enterprise Agreement customers, the renewal process provides an opportunity to negotiate favourable terms for reserved capacity and align Fabric adoption with broader Azure strategies.
The question becomes how to migrate in a way that optimises costs, minimises disruption, and positions your organisation for future analytics success.
Get Independent Migration Guidance
Microsoft Fabric migration affects your entire analytics strategy, licensing costs, and technical architecture. The decisions you make during EA renewal will impact your organisation for years.
Independent, vendor-neutral advice ensures your Fabric migration serves your business — not Microsoft’s sales targets.
At SAMexpert, we provide independent guidance on Microsoft licensing and enterprise technology decisions. Unlike vendor-tied consultants, our recommendations focus on your requirements rather than Microsoft's sales objectives. We help enterprises navigate licensing transitions, assess costs, and maintain negotiating leverage.
Planning your Fabric migration strategy? Contact our team for an independent assessment of your current Power BI environment and migration options. We work with enterprise customers facing similar transitions.