Nobody had ever asked who was actually opening these reports. The answer alone cut the license bill in half. Here’s how.
Fabric Lab · Issue 07 · By Dave Goyal
I sat down with an IT director who wanted help justifying next year’s Power BI Pro license renewal. Before we talked about renewing anything, I asked a different question: how many of your current Pro licenses were used by someone who opened a report in the last 90 days.
This audit analytics doesn’t exist in the organization.
The Audit that took an afternoon
We then ran the usage logs. Roughly half the assigned Pro licenses belonged to people who had not opened a single Fabric-hosted report in three months, employees who had changed roles, contractors whose engagement ended, and a handful of test accounts nobody remembered creating.
Important things here is that the fix was not a negotiation with Microsoft. It was a license audit. Reassign or remove the unused seats, confirm nothing broke for the people who actually needed access, and the license line dropped by roughly half at the next renewal.
Nobody had lost a report. Nobody had lost access they used. The only thing that changed was that the bill finally matched actual usage instead of a headcount from eighteen months ago.
Why This Sits Unaddressed So Often
License sprawl happens quietly because nobody owns it as an ongoing job. IT grants access when someone starts a role and rarely revokes it when the role changes. Finance sees a line item, not a usage report. The renewal conversation focuses on whether the price per seat went up, not on whether the seat count is still accurate.
This is not a Power BI problem. It is a governance gap that shows up first in Power BI because license assignment there is unusually easy to grant and unusually easy to forget.
What This Means For You
If you have not run a usage audit against your license roster in the last six months, that is the first move, before any renewal conversation. It typically takes an afternoon and pays for itself immediately.
If your Fabric or Power BI licensing is managed by whoever provisioned it originally, assign an owner now. Sprawl compounds every quarter nobody is watching it.
If you are heading into a renewal cycle, bring your own usage numbers to that conversation instead of accepting the vendor’s proposed seat count as the starting point.
The One Ask
If you want your own license roster checked against real usage, I am opening a few slots this month for a quick License Usage Audit: a few days, fixed scope, a real reassign-or-cut list on your actual numbers.
No pitch at the end. You keep the list whether or not we ever talk again.
Reply here or DM. When did you last check who is actually opening your reports? Tell me in the comments.
I read every reply.
Next issue: An Open Letter To Microsoft, From A Mid-Market CIO. What Fabric still needs to earn our trust, in the words of the people actually buying it.
Sources
- Pattern observed across client and prospect Power BI license reviews conducted by Think AI Consulting Corporation in 2026; individual client figures anonymized and not independently disclosed.
Dave Goyal
CEO, Think AI Consulting Corporation | Host, The Think AI Podcast
New here? I write Data and AI Demystified, the hidden costs and reality checks on Microsoft Fabric most partners won’t publish.
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