Creating a semantic layer is a not a requirement that asks for cloud services in particular. But Azure already offers a set of different services for this task.

With PowerBI Pro and Azure Analysis services the classical self-service and enterprise BI niches were served. But PowerBI Premium already smeared out the typical boundaries of those perspectives.

Let's recap the development of those services in the recent past and have a close look at the known road map. This will help in identifying business scenarios that ask for one service or another. By this, we can create a kind of decision matrix that will help us for strategic decisions in the future.