I am new to Microsoft BI and I am wondering if you need SSRS installed in order to deploy a PowerView report to SharePoint. My datasources will be Excel files.
I know my company has a SharePoint (don't know yet which version). I don't think SSRS is installed, can I still deploy a PowerView report on the SharePoint? Or is SSRS needed for this requirement? Datasource will be just excel files.
No, you need SSRS in SharePoint mode in order to use Power View reports. You will also need to have the Reporting Services Add-In for SharePoint and PowerPivot for SharePoint installed and configured. Your SharePoint instance will need to be 2010+, depending on your version of SQL and Excel.
When deployed in a SharePoint BI Centre, Power View utilises components of the SSRS installation for the report, and uses the PowerPivot server (essentially an SSAS Tabular instance) to store and process the data model.
If you think about it, it makes sense, since a Power View .RDLX file is essentially a zip file containing an SSRS report and some other stuff. Dan English wrote a good article exploring it.
MSDN has a good deployment checklist that I've used myself in the past.