Looking back on Qlik Connect 2024
It was almost impossible to miss. From June 3 to 5, there was a whirlwind of news surrounding Qlik. The reason: Qlik Connect, the annual conference from the mothership, took place in Orlando, Florida. Naturally, E-mergo was there (see our vlogs). The location already promised a lot: Universal Boulevard in Orlando, the same street where the world-famous Universal Studios theme parks are located. The conference itself was a rollercoaster ride through various highlights. In this blog, we look back at all this news and summarize these highlights.
"AI" as the Magic Word
In our preview, we already saw it coming: during Qlik Connect, a lot of attention was given to two letters: AI. The letters stand for Artificial Intelligence, a catch-all term for a wide range of different techniques. Even in the first substantive sentences of the keynote session by Qlik CEO Mike Capone, it was clear that we would be seeing these two letters frequently. He explained that the old saying "Garbage in is Garbage out" is still just as relevant, the only thing that seems to have changed is the scale at which we can bring in garbage. It is therefore important to ensure that we feed our new AI applications with data that can be trusted. To achieve this, Mike Capone outlined five pillars as the basis for the Qlik platform:
With Great (AI) Power Comes Great Responsibility
Developments around artificial intelligence have been progressing at a breakneck pace for several years. Two years ago, we could barely imagine the possibilities that developments like generative AI offer us today. An important message that was repeated on stage was “You are either good at AI or bad at business.” This was meant to emphasize the importance of being conscious of the possibilities AI can offer for your organization. The advice was to start small and expand AI knowledge and skills from there.
The rapid pace of AI innovations also raises some concerns regarding ethics and legislation. AI is not always transparent, has an enormous appetite for volumes of data, and can sometimes be biased and prejudiced. It is therefore important to keep an eye on the risks in this area. Legislation always lags behind such technological developments, so you cannot rely on it. In response, Qlik has set up an AI council for itself. This AI council consists of a group of journalists, scientists, and other experts who provide Qlik with independent advice on all AI-related matters. A striking statement from the AI council was that with good brakes on your car, you can take corners faster—in other words, with the AI council as AI conscience, Qlik dares to accelerate the integration of AI applications in the platform.
Qlik Answers for All Your Questions (and Answers, of Course)
All well and good, but what exactly are we going to see from this AI in the Qlik Platform? By far the biggest announcement at this edition of Qlik Connect was a new product line: Qlik Answers. In January of this year, it was announced that Qlik had acquired Kyndi. Many people in the Qlik ecosystem didn't have a clear picture of what this would mean for Qlik, but with the launch of Qlik Answers, it became immediately clear.
Qlik Answers is essentially Qlik's response to applications like Microsoft's Co-pilot. It works as follows: you upload a number of documents (in Word or PDF format, for example) to the Qlik platform. Then you group this set of documents into a "knowledge base," after which you can ask questions in human language. Qlik Answers interprets your question and then searches for an answer in those documents. You then receive an answer in human language, with references to the passages in the documents where the answer was found. These references make this functionality powerful. A known phenomenon of generative AI applications like ChatGPT is the so-called "hallucinating," where the answer you get is made up and not accurate. By referencing the source, you can easily verify the answer yourself, thus gaining confidence in its accuracy. The ease with which Qlik Answers could be filled with new documents and the speed with which the answers were generated made the room buzz with enthusiastic noises. The enthusiasm only grew when it was announced that this functionality would be available to customers as early as July of this year.
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Qlik Talend Cloud, the Best of Both Worlds
The other major announcement also stems from a previous acquisition by Qlik. Last year, the big news at Qlik Connect (then still called Qlik World) was the acquisition of Talend. A somewhat surprising acquisition, given that Talend was primarily known for its data integration functionalities. Qlik had previously acquired Attunity, which was also focused on this field. The big question was: how will Qlik merge these two product lines? The answer came this year in Orlando with the announcement of Qlik Talend Cloud.
Qlik Talend Cloud will be a new product that will essentially replace the existing Qlik Cloud Data Integration offering. This new product combines the best of both worlds. The real-time replication of data sources from Attunity is combined with the powerful visual data modeling approach of Talend Studio. Of course, an AI layer has also been added. During the keynote session, it was shown how a spoken command was translated into a SQL script to transform the data. Qlik Talend Cloud is also expected to be available to the public in July of this year.
And Much More...
In addition to the two major announcements of Qlik Answers and Qlik Talend Cloud, there were countless smaller announcements and news for virtually every other part of the Qlik Platform. For example, there will be an update to the user interface, making it possible to group sheets, create subfolders in spaces, and directly add advanced analysis types to sheets.
For AutoML, there will be standard dashboards and objects that help gain more insight into the generated predictive models and use them even more effectively in your dashboards.
For the reporting service, there will be a new Pixel Perfect editor, further narrowing the gap with NPrinting. It was also shown how on-demand reports allow users to generate a report whenever they want. This functionality is now already available on the platform.
And the list goes on. All in all, there are too many updates to mention in one blog. Of course, we at E-mergo will keep a close eye on all the releases this year. What is clear, in any case, is that Qlik is still working hard to become the best possible data platform on the market. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for BI also shows this, as Qlik has been included as a leader in the "Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms" for the 14th year in a row!