Welcome to Qlik Cloud

Over the past two years, Qlik has worked tremendously hard to bring a mature product to market. Major updates were pulled out of the hat every so often. Even for us consultants it was hard work to keep up with the speed of developments. From a whole new look-and-feel to the noble techniques of Machine Learning. From subscribing to content to application automation that includes a reporting component. Everything you need as a customer, you might say. But how do you go about it? And, what can it all mean for your organization or users? I'm going to try to explain that in a structured way in my 7-part blog.

Content 7-part blog

Coming editions will be about the layout, as well as the new features offered. For example, spaces are a new phenomenon. What do you use shared and managed space for now? Of course, I'm going to discuss connections. Where things like data movement, data gateway and data transfer will pass by. There will be a blog about data lineage & security and how this is handled within Qlik Cloud. How users are helped with the techniques, to properly understand where the data comes from. And of course we cannot ignore Application Automation and AutoML (machine learning).

For most organizations, it takes a lot of getting used to. Some have only just switched to Qlik Sense and then are already getting acquainted with Qlik Cloud. But if you want to stay up-to-date and enjoy all the possibilities, there is always a business case to be made to initiate this transition.

Switching to Qlik Cloud

Now why should I have to switch to the Cloud? Well, should! Of course you don't have to, but it can certainly be worthwhile. Especially organizations with a small number of users, can take full advantage of a "relatively" inexpensive solution. For just a few extra tens per year more, you already have a Qlik Cloud license instead of on-premises license. This is enough to activate the environment for one user. And with that you get almost all the functionality. There are some limits on usage, but to reach these limits, you have to work pretty hard. The advantage is that you don't have to host a server, which can quickly become expensive these days.

Should you already have a Qlik environment running locally, you can choose to put these apps in the cloud. This is also possible with QlikView documents. This gives you the ability to transition in phases. Even if you do not want all data to be directly in the cloud, this is an option. You can then for the most part still use all functionalities. There are also techniques such as Qlik Forts available where your data always remains on-premise.

Data & Security

In the background, Qlik Cloud runs on Amazon. Because of the large amount of people who care about your data, this is actually always secure. You can choose to store the data in three different places. The closest server farm is located in Ireland, making it the most logical choice for Dutch companies. The data then also still falls under European legislation and you don't have to worry about what the Americans or Russians can see.

By linking your own active directory, you maintain control over who is allowed to log in. If you don't want to control this, you can also simply invite employees to an e-mail address that is linked to a Qlik account. If you are used to Qlik Sense Enterprise, you will immediately notice that the permission structure has been made a lot simpler than you were used to. Does this mean it's worse? No, I don't think so. It just takes some getting used to.

Qlik cloud, takes some getting used to

I think this also taps directly into the right sentiment of people opening the cloud version for the first time. It takes some getting used to. Where the culture shock from QlikView to Qlik Sense was huge, moving to Qlik cloud is a lot gentler. Still, there are significant differences from Qlik Sense and it sometimes feels like you're being somewhat limited in the way you were used to working. The product was developed from a developer point of view and end-user philosophy. Once you get the hang of it, you begin to see the benefits as well. In blog two, I'll take a closer look at one of the biggest differences from Qlik Sense. (Small teaser, it's definitely worth it).