That's actually the preferred deployment.
We do offer the ability to host a Power BI tenant on behalf of our customers, and we can sell licensing if absolutely necessary. But that isn't what we really want to do for multiple reasons (many of which is that you won't be able to take full advantage of the breadth of features within Power BI itself).
At a high level, on of our deployments looks kinda like this:
1. We connect to a customer's environment via VPN/RDP/Kaseya/Bomgar/etc.
2. We sync the Power BI templates with their data.
3. If necessary, we massage our data model, queries, etc.
4. If the customer requires some assistance, we also help setup the MS Data Gateway (very lightweight application that allows the Power BI Service in the cloud to talk to an OnPrem data source).
5. We make a final save of the templates, and had them over to the client, to publish
in their own Power BI tenant.
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But more specifically to your question on pro's and con's:
The biggest thing to look out for with PureConnect Cloud and Power BI is that Genesys will not allow a direct connect from Power BI to your PureConnect Cloud database in their data center. So first, you'll need to setup some type of replication of your DB (mirror, replication, transactional log shipping, etc.).
Once that is in place, you'll connect directly to your OnPrem PC data.
Power BI Desktop is a free download and you can use it all across your org for free. It was born out of Excel, so if you are halfway decent at Excel, you'll do just fine with Power BI and your learning curve can be quite minimal. From a licensing standpoint (and I'm sure you found this out already Barry, but just in case others are curious), you can get a full "Pro" license for $10/user/month. But if your org uses Microsoft 365 E5 licenses, Power BI is already included. And if they use E3 licensing, you can get a discount for Power BI. We have some clients that have told us they got their licenses for $6-$8/user/month. But again, it all depends on your MS partner of record, quantity, etc.
OOB, Power BI can connect to literally hundreds of different datasources. And even more custom connectors can be downloaded for free from the MS App Store if necessary. And after connect to multiple datasources, you can use Power BI to build your own data model as well, inherently in the application (you don't necessarily NEED to pull data from SQL, AWS, Salesforce, Dynamics 365 into a EDW first; Power BI could connect and build that model "on the fly").
There are also several ways for your viewers to consume your data. They can go to powerbi.com, feed your own in-house app, embed in your own intranet, etc.
One drawback I hear somewhat often is the amount of time it takes to learn "everything" Power BI can do. Because it is an enterprise grade app, it can do quite a bit from an app point of view (hundreds of visuals, then formatting the visuals, creating data models, altering data relationships, setting up a dynamic data sync, etc.). But it just takes time and helps to really focus your training or learning Power BI to smaller chunks.
Microsoft seems to have realized this. They have free training that ranges from "setting up your first report" to "building an efficient data model with multiple cloud and prem data sources", and it's all free:
Power BI TrainingI hope this helps!
Trent.