Structured Power BI to Amazon Quick Sight Migration Reduces Platform Transition Risk

Quick Overview

Client: A leading global aerospace manufacturer  

Technologies used: AWS Quick Sight, Power BI, and Wavicle EZConvertBI Analyzer  

Goal: As part of phase one of the migration initiative, the objective was to evaluate the transition of select Power BI report pages to Amazon Quick Sight while ensuring alignment with the company’s broader AWS strategy. 

Challenges: Before proceeding with a full platform transition, the manufacturer required insight into dashboard complexity, estimated migration effort, and potential feature gaps to minimize risk. 

Solution: Wavicle used the EZConvertBI Analyzer to analyze dashboard architecture, transition Power BI report pages to Amazon Quick Sight, and identify required optimizations and workarounds. This structured approach established effort projections and reduced migration uncertainty. 

Challenges

The aerospace manufacturer evaluated migrating from Power BI to Amazon Quick Sight to align with its AWS investments. They required clarity on report complexity, migration feasibility, and estimated effort.

To support the evaluation, the manufacturer provided Wavicle with multiple PBIX files. However, key questions remained unanswered without detailed analysis:

• How complex were the existing dashboards at a structural and semantic level?
• How much manual reconstruction would Quick Sight require?
• Would key Power BI features translate effectively, or create functional gaps?

These uncertainties created decision risk and made it difficult to define scope, timelines, and resource allocation with confidence.

Solution

Wavicle divided the engagement into phases to minimize migration risk and provide a clear execution roadmap aligned with the company’s AWS strategy. In phase one, the team used the EZConvertBI Analyzer to convert the Power BI dashboards to Amazon Quick Sight.

Phase one was executed across four structured workstreams:

1. Structured Complexity Assessment

Wavicle applied the EZConvertBI Analyzer to multiple PBIX files to gain objective insight into the Power BI environment. Although only a subset of dashboards was analyzed, the assessment provided valuable understanding of structural complexity and migration considerations such as:

• Report structure and composition
• Report pages and design patterns
• Semantic models
• Datasets, tables, and relationships
• Data sources and external dependencies
• DAX usage and logic density

2. Conversion Validation

After mapping complexity, Wavicle proceeded to validation. Representative report pages were selected to address a range of:

• Visualization needs
• Filter interactions, including cross-filtering
• DAX-driven calculations
• Operational/export scenarios

Using automated conversion utilities, Wavicle accelerated layout recreation, visual mapping, and baseline data bindings, while highlighting areas that require manual refinement after automation.

3. Functional Gaps and Workarounds

Wavicle identified differences between Power BI and Quick Sight and documented practical workarounds instead of treating them as obstacles.

Key observations included:

• Nested filters: Not natively supported in Quick Sight. Separate filters were used to simulate nested behavior.
• Stacked area chart differences: Totals and tooltip background customization differ. Quick Sight tooltips follow theme styling, and totals are not displayed as in Power BI.

When a direct feature match was unavailable, Wavicle implemented alternatives to maintain functional intent.

4. Environment-Level Considerations

Wavicle separated dashboard/report page conversion from environment configuration to provide a realistic end-to-end view of the required Quick Sight setup, including:

• User and group setup
• Workspace permissions
• Refresh schedules
• Alerts, notifications, and subscriptions
• App packaging (where applicable)

These elements could not be automatically migrated and required manual configuration in the target environment.

Result

Wavicle’s phase one confirmed that migrating from Power BI to Amazon Quick Sight at an enterprise scale is technically and operationally feasible. It also identified where automated conversion is effective and where manual optimization is needed.

The EZConvertBI Analyzer quantified the report structure and logic across the reviewed dashboards.
Automated conversion showed that core visuals, layouts, and calculations could be migrated to Quick Sight with minimal loss of design integrity, even for complex pages.

The table below shows the savings achieved via auto-conversion using EZConvertBI.

Overall, phase one eliminated uncertainty and enabled the manufacturer to proceed with the Power BI to Quick Sight migration with confidence.

Next Steps

Following the successful completion of phase one, the manufacturer approved proceeding with a full-scale Power BI to Amazon Quick Sight migration.