Project Crescent was initially available for public download on 11 July 2011, bundled with SQL Server Codename Denali. It was originally designed by Ron George in the summer of 2010 and named Project Crescent.
This application was originally conceived by Thierry D'Hers and Amir Netz of the SQL Server Reporting Services team at Microsoft. One main differentiator of the product is the ability to load custom visualizations. In March 2016, Microsoft released an additional service called Power BI Embedded on its Azure cloud platform. It provides data warehouse capabilities including data preparation, data mining, and interactive dashboards. Power BI provides cloud-based BI (business intelligence) services, known as 'Power BI Services', along with a desktop-based interface, called 'Power BI Desktop'. Data may be input by reading directly from a database, webpage, PDF, or structured files such as spreadsheets, CSV, XML, JSON, XLSX, and SharePoint. Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn various sources of data into static and interactive data visualizations. It is part of the Microsoft Power Platform. Microsoft Power BI is an interactive data visualization software product developed by Microsoft with a primary focus on business intelligence.
