New Delhi, Jan 20 (IANS): Microsoft on Friday announced the public preview of 'Azure Analysis Services', a latest addition to company's Cloud platform to simplify data analysis.

Azure Analysis Services is an enterprise grade OLAP (online analytical processing) engine and BI (Business Intelligence) modeling platform, offered as a fully managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS).

"With Azure Analysis Services, a BI professional can create a semantic model over the raw data and share it with business users so that all they need to do is connect to the model and immediately explore the data and gain insights," said Bret Grinslade, Principal Programme Manager, Azure Analysis Services, in a statement.

Businesses can get on board quickly without managing infrastructure and can also scale resources to match their business needs.

Azure Analysis Services are compatible with any major BI tool. The supported Microsoft tools include Power BI, Excel, and SQL Server Reporting Services.