it's hard dealing with legacy stuff. One alternative I can propose - pitch your management and go get yourself a separate and latest SQL instance just for analytics.
Easiest solution you can do is to install SQL Server Developer version which is free.
cherry pick what your need and ETL your data out of legacy systems into your warehouse and run something like tableau/looker/powerbi on top and you will be amazed how effective you can be
Agreed, but again, I ETL my data into a warehouse, as a developer (not a BI person), I'm reaching for spark, flink, or whatever to roll my analytics, and python/flask/d3 for building web dashboards.
Then, once you have 'insight' into your Data, you can easily 'do' something with it without the limitations of a tiered product.
cherry pick what your need and ETL your data out of legacy systems into your warehouse and run something like tableau/looker/powerbi on top and you will be amazed how effective you can be