Qlik Expands Cloud Deployment Options For Its Business Analysis Software

Big data company also debuts simpler licensing plan for partners and customers that cover on-premises and cloud deployments.

Qlik is shifting its business analytics software deeper into the cloud with this week's move to allow businesses and organizations to deploy its flagship Qlik Sense Enterprise entirely on Qlik Cloud Services, the vendor's Software-as-a-Service environment.

King Of Prussia, Pa.-based Qlik, which is holding its Qlik Qonnections customer and partner conference in Dallas this week, is also simplifying its licensing model for customers and partners that allows on-premises and multi-cloud deployments using a single license.

The "SaaS-first" availability for Qlik Sense Enterprise "is a game-changer for our partners. To be able to offer Qlik on a SaaS basis is something our partners have been asking for," said Chris Moore, Qlik senior vice president of partners and alliances, in an interview with CRN.

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In addition to the option of deploying Qlik's software on Qlik Cloud Services, the latest Qlik Sense Enterprise release can be deployed on Kubernetes in a private cloud or on a public cloud platform such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. And all deployment options, including Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows, now work as part of a single multi-site, multi-cloud framework that can be managed as one instance.

The new subscription license model incorporates both on-premises and cloud usage. "There was a lot of complexity around the licensing. Today there is just one license," Moore said, noting that the company had heard from partners that its licensing plan was too complicated.

On the technology side, the latest release of Qlik Sense Enterprise offers a new capability called Associative Insights, a feature that identifies hidden insights within data and identifies data values that are unrelated to a user's selections of questions. That, according to the company, helps users think outside the box and develop insights that might have been overlooked.

The new release also offers augmented intelligence capabilities including expanded natural language search support for Insight Advisor, a suite of Qlik Sense products for groups and teams, direct connections in the cloud to Salesforce and SAP applications, the ability to host QlikView applications in the cloud, a Qlik Sense mobile client for BlackBerry, and support for the Mobile Iron enterprise mobility management platform.

This week's announcements follow Qlik's moves to expand its technology portfolio through strategic acquisitions, including the acquisition of Podium Data in July 2018 and the acquisition of Attunity, which just closed last week.

Podium Data's software became Qlik Data Catalyst, software used to build a catalog of all data throughout an organization that's available for business analytics.

The acquisition of Attunity brings that company's data integration and big data management technology into the Qlik portfolio, giving Qlik users the ability to combine data from multiple sources – even in real time – in preparation for data analysis.

Moore noted that while Qlik relies on resellers and other partners to reach about 80 percent of its customer base, Attunity focused more on a partner referral model with a particular emphasis on global and regional systems integrators.

Moore said there is about a 50 percent overlap between the two companies' partner bases and he said partners see the Attunity acquisition as an opportunity to develop a data integration and data management practice.

Qlik's acquisitions come as business analysis software vendors are trying to broaden their product lines with data integration, preparation and management tools and offer customers a more complete big data platform.