For whom is Qlik App Automation?
Dmitry Gudkov
Someone at EasyMorph (the easiest-to-use ETL and API automation app with 180+ actions and 700+ customers)
Yesterday, Qlik announced the release of Qlik Application Automation. Since I also work in data automation and I find the news interesting, I thought I'd share a few reflections about it.
Qlik's management board has a solid strategic vision about the company's role and positioning, and this vision is paying off already and will pay off in the future. Extending the product capabilities towards automation is the right thing to do, especially when the Business Intelligence industry seems to stagnate. I believe it's more visionary than what Tableau demonstrates so far. Although I'm sure, Salesforce can introduce a no-code automation story soon (if not already) and will eventually find a way to tie it to Tableau. For now, their automation story lags behind.
If you didn't look at it yet, Qlik's App Automation offers a block diagram-like workflow design with a decent number of connectors and integrations with 3rd party cloud applications.
The product's idea is very much similar to PowerAutomate (which, by the way, gets more and more integrated with Power BI) -- simple workflows that glue together various cloud applications and are triggered by user actions or by internal system events such as scheduler or alerts.
Like with PowerAutomate, the concepts of ETL and workflow automation are isolated from each other. And this brings me to the main question: for whom is Qlik's App Automation? I'm not sure I understand the positioning. Among other things, the product's web page claims, "Its drag-and-drop approach is simple enough for business users while also offering advanced features such as conditions, loops, lists and error handlers for technical users". Well, there are a few things off with this claim, and I'm not sure where to start.
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Conditions, loops, and other mentioned features are not advanced, they are essential for an automation tool. Also, they are not exclusively for technical users. Business users need to use them all the time (check out questions on our forum). If people at Qlik assume that business users don't need them, they clearly don't understand what they need. If they think BI developers need a no-code tool to arrange conditions and loops, they underestimate their skills. Qlik developers had absolutely no problem with scripting conditions and loops for many years.
Another signal is that Qlik App Automation is not for business users is that it's cloud-based. It's not a desktop application. Anyone who tasked themselves with understanding how non-technical people work with data knows well that business users deal a lot with local files and spreadsheets stored in their desktops and laptops and in network folders. Good luck automating that with a cloud application. Microsoft understands that, and that's why they offer PowerAutomate Desktop. EasyMorph provides a desktop application for precisely the same reason.
So for whom is Qlik App Automation? As I see it, targeting it for business users is pointless also because Qlik's self-service story never took off (to their excuse, nobody else's did). Qlik has long assumed that their business users are passive consumers. They don't write Qlik scripts, they don't do self-service data preparation in Qlik, and they won't use App Automation. (OK, a minuscule number of heroes will try it, but that's an exception, not the rule.)
That leaves us with Qlik developers, who don't really require loops and conditions to be no-code. However, dealing with 3rd party cloud services can be a pain (authorization alone is a big hassle) and not everybody is willing to immerse themselves into the nuances of the HTTP protocol and web APIs. This is where I see the value of Qlik App Automation. Being able to push a piece of data into a cloud CRM or another SaaS with just a few clicks without dealing with low-level technicalities of HTTP really saves time and effort.
Of course, introducing actionability to Qlik dashboards is an excellent, long-needed addition. Like any automation, it will open new opportunities and provide extra value in existing Qlik deployments. I wonder if BI vendors should make a step further and start seeing themselves as low-code app builders, but that's another story.
Leader of a team of experts, providing #AI enabled #SmarterBI; including Data Strategy, Qlik Managed Services, and Transformative Composable Solutions with Cyferd, to clients worldwide.
3 年Dimitry and others. Qlik has done something that the other vendors have not. They have deployed a solution in SaaS and made it available from a single user. A complete solution that that comes pre architected. That is phenomenal and a giant step forward from where Qlik and Qlik SaaS was a year ago. This is also, only the beginning. The debate about who is automation/blendr for, to me is mute. To me, what is important is that the functionality exists at all. Last week it did not. Now we can all sit back, say wow and get to work building some great workflow and automation. Chuck in some calls to some cool Python scripts as well. The world is your oyster. I see this as a massive step to providing capability to allow data flows between multiple SaaS tenants and services. Keep up the debate :)
Business Intelligence Data Architect at Hardis Group
3 年I share your point of view Dmitry I am quite confused on what Qlik, Microsoft and other editors are trying to do : I feel a trend to "trivialize" BI, at any cost.
Data & Analytics leader, specializing in pharma and healthcare.
3 年Thanks for writing this. You eloquently put words to my own thoughts. I was about 4.5 minutes into Mike's "look how easy this 100 step process is" explainer video when I realized there's no way business users would ever do this. There probably is a niche group who would leverage this new capability but unfortunately I doubt it's going to be the game changer Qlik clearly hopes it will.