A New Leader with a New Vision

By now, I am sure you have seen the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for BI Platforms. This year, QlikTech is the only company to join the leader’s quadrant. It’s a remarkable achievement. For one thing, it recognizes that QlikView has truly arrived as a BI solution. Combined with a successful IPO, it helps to establish QlikTech as a major player, as if you doubted it. We are playing in the premier league.

QlikTech arrived here by what Gartner describe as the “z-path.” Niche players may prove themselves to be visionary. They can grow to be challengers. With compelling customer evidence, and supporting a broad strategy, a challenger may become a leader.

So, it’s reasonable to ask, what does it mean to be a leader? What changes practically for us at QlikTech?

To compare realistically with the other major players, I believe there are three things we must do:

• We should build-in significant dependencies which tie customers into a larger technology stack than they need;
• We really need to make deployment more challenging if we are to win over IT departments;
• Last, but not least, we must make our licensing more complicated and confusing.

I expect, however, that my advice will be ignored.

Leading with Vision

Seriously, however, some things are already changing for us, and the Gartner report – whether you like Magic Quadrants or not – will be influential in the market. Some enterprise customers will simply evaluate QlikView in the same terms as other leading vendors. They will probably do so with the same RFPs.

If I worked at a megavendor, I would see that as an opportunity. I would emphasize that you need a stack of technologies to meet enterprise BI needs. Well maybe, but only if you approach BI as a technology problem rather than focusing on business benefits. Nevertheless, as I learn more about QlikView, I am surprised at just how complete the product is, even for boilerplate technology requirements. It’s going to be fun challenging other leaders on their own terms, when we need to. Equally, the smaller “challengers” will have their work cut out delivering the same breadth and depth that QlikView has built up over many years.

There will be some surprises in store for the megavendors, I’m sure. We are in a great situation. QlikView is complete enough to deliver a broad solution, but not overly complex or carrying cumbersome legacies.

For all that, I do not think it is interesting to play the same old game. QlikTech may be in the Leader’s quadrant, but at heart we are still Visionaries.

In that spirit, we have been talking recently about Business Discovery. Gartner, in the new MQ, make a similar distinction between “data discovery platforms” and “traditional enterprise BI platforms.” There’s a fine whitepaper here which describes the Business Discovery vision from QlikTech in more detail. But it’s easy to summarize the benefits…

Business Discovery is fast and mobile. With Business Discovery, an app-like experience enables users to remix, reassemble, share and collaborate, with the versatility and small footprint they are used to from their other favorite technologies.

In future posts, I’ll dig into Business Discovery in more detail. I’ll explore these benefits and the technologies that make them possible. I think you’ll find Business Discovery to be a compelling approach that meets important needs – not just for this year’s Magic Quadrant, or next years, but for a whole new generation of business decision makers. For them, QlikView really is the new leader.