Microsoft PowerBI Cloud

Author:  Eric Vasbinder

Logistics

Support Status:  Supported

Integration Method:  ODBC Direct

Connection Method:  

• OPTION A:  TLS Database Endpoint (TLS VPN) OR IPSEC VPN from Customer Environment (Recommended)

• OPTION B:  Hosted Data Connector (a.k.a. "On Premises Data Gateway")

Hosted:

• OPTION A:  NO

• OPTION B:  YES

Additional Charge:  YES

• OPTION A:  IF Customer hosts Data connector: then only TLS or IPSEC VPN necessary

  • NOTE:  This may already be included in your VP1 bundle contract.  Please reach out to your rep to verify.

• OPTION B:  IF VP hosts Data Connector: then 1 third party integration management fee and 1 standard Windows Server (extra server fee waived if third party integrations server already present)

Description

As per many other server-side integrations to third-party products, this product is designed to use a data connector (a.k.a. a shim) that speaks to the Vista database directly using ODBC and then itself connects to the third party.

The hosted data connector may be hosted in either the Viewpoint environment or in the customer's environment.  If it is hosted in Viewpoint's cloud, an additional server is required as we do not host third party components on the Vista server for security and manageability reasons.  If the data connector is instead hosted in the customer's environment, a TLS or IPSEC VPN is necessary to be stood up between the customer's environment on-premise and the Viewpoint cloud environment.

Due to cost and manageability concerns, we recommend the use of Option "A" above, where the customer hosts the third party component in their environment and connects it to Vista in our cloud using an VPN tunnel.

For Option "B", hosting the connector in Viewpoint's environment, an additional charge for the additional server, required by SOC 2/2, will be necessary if the customer does not already have a third party integrations server aready present.  In this case, the customer is connecting cloud-hosted Vista to the third-party's cloud directly.  This is done by installing the vendor-supplied shim connector in the DMZ of the customer's single tenant environment in our cloud.  This shim connector needs to be installed on a separate server as it accepts inbound control requests from the Internet.

• • NOTE:  Since this shim is a third party product that we need to host, it requires being hosted on a separate server in our cloud for security reasons.  As such, we need to pass on the costs for an additional server to the customer.

Client-Side Tool

The client-side PowerBI Desktop (Builder) application must be hosted outside of our cloud, usually in the customer's environment on customer local workstations,  If you are using PowerBI Cloud, vs. using the PowerBI Client to directly connect to the Vista DB server, you will NOT need to connect PowerBI's client to Vista. 

IF you are connecting the PowerBI Client to Vista directly, you will need to leverage an IPSEC VPN or the TLS Database Endpoint (TLS VPN).  Here is a Vista Cloud FAQ article that will provide more details on this topic:  Connecting Client-Side Integrations to Cloud Vista (e.g. Excel, Crystal) 

Datawarehouse and Fabric Note

Please note that once you have the PowerBI Data connector installed in your cloud environment, you may easily use it to feed data through your Microsoft Fabric connection into a number of destinations including Data Lakehouses.  All you need to do is to specify the PowerBI "On Premises" data connector gateway as a data feed source for Fabric.  Once that is done, your data will be fed through the PowerBI connector and into Fabric.

Please see the following Microsoft article for more information:   https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-gateway-custom-connectors

TL;DR:

Customers who need to integrate Microsoft's PowerBI Cloud with Vista in our cloud need to either host the PowerBI Data Connector in their environment and connect it to Vista over a TLS Database Endpoint (TLS VPN) or IPSEC VPN tunnel OR they should purchase an additional add-on “Standard Server”, as well as the management fee to maintain the third party server.  The PowerBI Desktop builder client cannot be installed in our cloud and must be installed on the customer's local workstation.