Is it easy to migrate from PerformancePoint to Power BI apps?

The short answer is: not necessarily. With the popularity of SharePoint in the enterprise space, it comes as no surprise that some groups have adopted PerformancePoint to deliver key performance indicators and dashboards to their users. PerformancePoint has provided a way for users to interact with data through different visualizations without leaving SharePoint pages.

Unfortunately, since the introduction of SharePoint Online and Power BI apps, clients using PerformancePoint have quickly realized that the platform needs to be replaced or maintained on premises due to Microsoft not offering any indications of future upgrades or a path to the cloud.

PerformancePoint is mainly an on-premises or server-based platform, while Power BI apps come in both hosted and on-premises servers. The two platforms are significantly different from each other, which complicates the migration path.

Power BI and PerformancePoint both use different tools and have data visualizations that are based on completely different technologies. Power BI apps leverage HTML5 and JavaScript for visualization, while PerformancePoint relies heavily on SQL Server Reporting Service charts.

SharePoint administrators are also reporting that writers are finding themselves required to create all the data visualizations from scratch when it comes to migrating to Power BI from PerformancePoint. This means that additional licensing is required in order to enable Power BI apps to access any of the data sets that PerformancePoint is using.

Since there have been significant changes in the overall user experience when it comes to using Power BI, which also offers a mobile experience and richer visualizations, organizations will need to develop an implementation plan that evaluates all their existing dashboards in order to migrate from PerformancePoint. They will also need to identify all the different necessary milestones as they begin the redesign of their new dashboards with Power BI apps.