QuickSight, Amazon Web Services’ cloud-based business intelligence service is now generally available, following more than a year-long preview period. More than 1,500 AWS customers have been using QuickSight during the preview period, including the likes of Edmunds.com Inc., Hotelbeds SLU, Infor Inc. and MLB Advanced Media LP.

The cloud-based analytics service lets people build visualizations, perform ad-hoc analysis, and get business insights from their data. All queries in QuickSight will be run using technology called SPICE (Super-fast, Parallel, In-memory Calculation Engine).

You can connect data in existing repositories or upload new data to AWS. Data can be stored in different services and locations, including AWS services like Relational Database Service, Aurora, Redshift and S3. QuickSight can also access data stored in MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server databases, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Salesforce and other services.

Price and availability

QuickSight is free to use for a single user with 1GB of SPICE capacity. Alternatively, you can sign up for a Standard or Enterprise edition.

Amazon QuickSight offers a 60-day free trial up to four users, after which users will be converted to a month-to-month subscription at the Standard subscription rate

The Standard edition costs $9 per user billed monthly with a one-year commitment. You will be able to connect to all supported data sources, prepare your data, build visualizations, speed up your queries using SPICE, add filters, change chart types, add calculations and publish to other users. Each user gets 10GB of SPICE capacity, additional GB can be bought for $0.25 per GB per month.

The Enterprise edition costs $18 per user billed monthly with a one-year commitment. You will get the same features as the Standard edition plus support for Active Directory integration, encryption at rest, fine-grained user access control, audit logs via AWS CloudTrail, custom domain, branded site and up to 2X the query throughput of the Standard Edition. Each user gets 10GB of SPICE capacity, additional GB can be bought for $0.38 per GB per month.

At this stage, QuickSight is only available through three AWS data center regions: U.S. East (Northern Virginia), U.S. West (Oregon) and E.U. (Ireland).

Get started with Amazon QuickSight

Choose your data source: In the QuickSight main screen click on Manage data > select one of the displayed data sets or click New data > select the relevant data set.

Note: With your approval, QuickSight will automatically discover your AWS data sources that are available in your account. Alternatively, you can provide connection details for other AWS data sources.

Create a visualization: Choose your table > select “Import to SPICE for quicker analytics” > click Edit/Preview data to import specific rows and columns or click Visualize to import all the data. If you select Edit/Preview you can tick the checkboxes on the left next to the data you want to upload.

Click on Prepare data and visualize to upload the data to SPICE > select a field to get started. The QuickSight’s AutoGraph feature will automatically generate the most appropriate visualization based on the data selected.

Depending on your query you can select alternative visualizations and visual types including vertical and horizontal bar charts, line charts, pivot tables, tree maps, pie charts and heat maps.

Share an analysis, dashboard or story with team members

Click the Share icon found in the top-right > enter the recipients (using an email address, username or group name) and permission levels > click Share.

Access QuickSight on your iOS device

You can access your Amazon QuickSight data, analyses, stories and dashboards from anywhere using the iPhone app. An Android version and tablet support, together with creating annotations in offline mode, will be launched in the future.

You can also access QuickSight on your laptop, desktop or mobile device using one of the latest browsers.

Buy additional SPICE capacity

As mentioned both the Standard and Enterprise edition comes with 10GB of SPICE capacity per user, but it is possible to buy additional capacity for an extra cost.

To check your SPICE capacity click your Profile icon in the top right > Manage QuickSight. You will see an overview of the amount of SPICE capacity you have used and have available.

Note: You will need to have an Admin role to make any changes to SPICE capacity.  

If you want additional SPICE capacity, click the “Purchase more capacity” button. Select how many GBs you want to purchase > click Purchase SPICE capacity.

Note: Additional SPICE capacity is charged at $0.25 (Standard edition) and $0.38 (Enterprise edition) per GB per month.  

If you have purchased additional SPICE capacity, but no longer require it you can choose to reduce your SPICE capacity. On the Manage QuickSight screen, click the “Release unused purchased capacity” button > select either “Release all” or indicate the number of GBs that you want to release > click Release SPICE capacity.

Source: AWS

Images via AWS