David Menninger's Analyst Perspectives

We are happy to share some insights about Qlik drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

Earlier this year we published the Ventana Research Value Index: Analytics and Data 2021, the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts. We then developed three additional Value Indexes on analytics and business intelligence focusing on mobile, embedded and collaborative capabilities. Because each is a critical aspect of modern BI, we developed specific criteria to provide an in-depth look at features geared specifically to mobile, embedded and collaborative use.

In all of our Value Indexes, we utilize a structured research methodology that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal and vendor selection process for analytics and business intelligence. We evaluated Qlik and 17 other vendors in seven categories: five relevant to the product – Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability – and two related to the vendor – Total Cost of Ownership/Return on Investment and Vendor Validation. To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and on data derived from our Benchmark Research on Analytics and Data.

Qlik is a large, independent provider of BI software. It was categorized as an Exemplary Vendor, ranking fourth overall in this Value Index evaluation. Qlik was a Value Index Leader in Manageability and Usability, and in Customer Experience and within TCO/ROI and Validation.

Qlik Sense is available as a cloud-based offering or on premises. Qlik has bolstered the data-related aspects of analytics with several acquisitions that improved its rating from prior years. Data is generally loaded into Qlik Sense’s in-memory associative index engine for high performance, but the company has also created a Direct Discovery option to access data on demand. Qlik Sense is highly customizable but also easy to use.

Qlik would perform better in Adaptability with better business process integration. In the Capability section, more collaborative capabilities and predictive analytics would help improve its rating.

Organizations have adopted more widespread use of enterprise collaboration technologies in place of or in addition to email. Analytics vendors have begun offering integration with those platforms. As a result of both of these trends, we see a resurgence in the use of collaborative analytics and BI. Qlik supports sharing and emailing analyses, alerts and notifications, and some annotation and commenting on analyses. Analyses can also be posted to third-party collaboration tools via URL. Assigning and tracking tasks to completion, as well as better support for discussion groups and wall posting would improve Qlik’s Capability ranking.

Analyses are easier to perform when analytics are embedded in business processes and applications in part because the application collects and assembles data. Our research shows that data preparation can be the most time-consuming step in the analytical process. Qlik Sense offers developers several options for embedding. Developers can use JavaScript application programming interfaces to embed, interact with and extend Qlik Sense objects. JavaScript libraries are available for interacting with the Qlik Sense engine independent of the visualizations. Qlik also provides REST APIs to access the platform. Finally, custom connectors can be created for non-web-based versions of Qlik Sense. Qlik would perform better in Capability with a few additional visualizations, better integration of documents and desktop objects, and better natural language processing.

There are trade-offs to delivering analytics and business intelligence on a variety of mobile devices including smartphones and tablets. For example, it may not be realistic to expect full-blown analyses on smartphones due to the small form factor. On the other hand, mobile devices offer capabilities such as voice interaction, location information and cameras that can enhance the user experience. Qlik Sense Mobile is available as a native application for iOS and Android devices. It offers a wide range of visualizations, and good navigation and search capabilities utilizing Qlik’s associative indexing technology. The product supports natural language search and some limited voice capabilities, depending on the device. Qlik Sense Mobile has an offline mode for selected data sets as well. Qlik would perform better in Capability with more collaborative capabilities, support for wearables, camera integration and location awareness.

This assessment was based on Qlik’s analytics products available at end of December in 2020. Since our evaluation, Qlik has issued two additional releases. Several enhancements have been made to Insight Advisor search and chat capabilities, including multilingual chat and the option to generate narrative displays when using search. A new visualization was added for grid charts. New connectors have been created for Amazon Web Services Athena, Databricks and Microsoft Azure Synapse. Support for the Microsoft Edge browser was added for Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android. Additional information on new releases can be found here.

Organizations should evaluate data and analytics requirements including collaborative, embedded and mobile capabilities to ensure the existing solutions are meeting business needs. If existing solutions are not satisfying those requirements, organizations should consider whether Qlik can help meet those needs.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of analytics and BI software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here, and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Read the report here.

Regards,

David Menninger