Microsoft BI practitioners have three options for hosting semantic models: SSAS (on prem), Azure Analysis Services (cloud), and Power BI (cloud). AAS is somewhat caught between a rock and a hard place. Given that Power BI gets the most attention for cloud deployment, why would you consider AAS at all? There are two main reasons:
Read on for the reasons. Knowing how much it does cost, it almost feels like trying to thread a needle: if you don’t spent enough or have enough data, Power BI is typically much more efficient; if you have sufficient data, I’d want to do a proper cost analysis between on-prem (or IaaS) Analysis Services and Azure Analysis Services.