Part 2: From Stability to Panic – How Azure Analysis Services Disrupts the Business

Opening Hook:
2016. The IT team at FreshGoods Co. stands before the leadership team, presenting slides with Microsoft’s cloud strategy. Azure Analysis Services (AAS) is the future. On-prem SSAS is yesterday’s news.

The room fills with unease. The CFO mumbles: “Another cost model?”  The marketing director frowns: “Will my Monday dashboards still arrive?” The COO mutters: “We can’t afford downtime during peak season.”

Many companies currently consult business intelligence services, such as Power BI or Microsoft BI, to determine whether a transition is worthwhile in terms of the disruption it would cause.

The Accidental Earthquake:
Moving to AAS looked logical on paper:

• Elastic compute power.
  
• No more server maintenance.
  
• Integration with other Azure tools.
  

But the actual migration was anything but smooth.

• The IT team spent long nights rebuilding models, hoping DAX measures behaved the same in AAS.
• User authentication shifted to Azure AD, confusing employees who suddenly couldn’t log in.
• Week after week, refresh failures triggered angry calls: “Why didn’t my inventory dashboard update this morning?”

What was supposed to be progress felt like an earthquake. Trust in BI wavered.

Employee Voices:

• Finance analyst: “I can’t explain to the CFO why the numbers don’t match last week’s report.”
• Warehouse planner: “If I can’t rely on dashboards, I’ll go back to Excel.”
• CEO, impatient: “We spent all this money, and things got worse?”

Trust Was the Real Casualty:
FreshGoods eventually stabilised on AAS. Elastic compute smoothed peak hour queries. Marketing loved mobile access. Finance enjoyed faster reporting cycles.

But scars remained. The phrase “new BI system” made managers nervous. They started associating BI upgrades with disruption, panic, and late nights at quarter-end.

Timeline Context:

• 2016: AAS launched.
• 2017-2019: Wider rollouts. Early adopters like FreshGoods managed rough migrations.
• 2019: AAS matured as a reliable service.

Just as users began to relax, another curveball appeared.

Cliffhanger Ending for Part 2:

Over coffee, the CIO received the latest Microsoft roadmap update: “Analysis Services will be converging into Power BI Premium.” The mug nearly slipped. After all the chaos of moving to AAS… they’d have to rethink everything again. Read more in part 3…