Qlik’s new data integration capabilities and an AI-powered assistant at its annual user conference, Qlik Connect 2024, in Orlando.
These innovations, including the Qlik Talend Cloud and Qlik Answers, are designed to help businesses develop AI applications with data that can be trusted for critical decision-making.
Scheduled for general availability by the summer, these Qlik GenAI Assistant aim to enhance data quality and provide actionable insights through advanced generative AI capabilities.
Qlik GenAI
Qlik Talend Cloud is a data integration suite that combines the strengths of Qlik’s pre-existing data integration capabilities with those acquired from Talend in 2023.
This suite aims to ensure high-quality data for accurate AI model training and business decision-making.
Key features include a data marketplace that facilitates the discovery and curation of quality datasets and data products using natural language search.
Data engineering tools offering both no-code and pro-code options and a trust score for AI models that provides an assessment of the underlying data quality, enhancing the reliability of AI-generated insights.
Qlik Answers is a generative AI assistant designed to help users interact with their data through natural language. This tool simplifies data querying and analysis, making it accessible to non-technical users.
It enables users to ask questions in plain language and receive relevant insights, reducing the need for coding skills.
Qlik Answers also provides detailed explanations of how each response is generated, allowing users to verify the accuracy and reliability of the insights.
It incorporates robust security and governance measures to ensure safe data exploration and compliance with organizational policies.
Their new partnership with AWS is a strategic move aimed at enhancing AI capabilities for joint customers. This collaboration offers several benefits, including access to Amazon Bedrock, which allows users to leverage a wide range of foundation models through a single API, simplifying AI development.
It also provides secure and responsible AI development tools, facilitating the creation of robust AI models and applications, and ensures compliance across AWS regions, enabling Qlik users to expand their operations globally with confidence.
AI development focuses on trusted data and flexibility, setting it apart from larger competitors like Salesforce, Google, and Microsoft, which have made more aggressive investments.
According to Donald Farmer, founder and principal of TreeHive Strategy, Qlik’s moves have been tactical but well-aligned with the needs of its existing customers.
Qlik Talend Cloud addresses the critical need for high-quality data in AI model training and business decision-making.
By ensuring data accuracy and reliability, it helps organizations make better-informed decisions and avoid the pitfalls of poor-quality data.
Qlik Answers empowers self-service users by enabling natural language interactions with data. Its focus on explainability helps users understand how insights are generated, fostering trust and confidence in the AI-generated responses.
This feature is particularly important for executives and decision-makers wary of potential inaccuracies in AI outputs.
They plans to integrate its structured and unstructured data capabilities into a unified solution. This ambitious goal aims to provide users with a comprehensive analytics platform that combines all types of data in one location.
Strategic Collaborations
Qlik’s new partnership with AWS is a strategic move aimed at enhancing AI capabilities for joint customers. This collaboration offers several benefits, including access to Amazon Bedrock, which allows users to leverage a wide range of foundation models through a single API, simplifying AI development.
It also provides secure and responsible AI development tools, facilitating the creation of robust AI models and applications, and ensures compliance across AWS regions, enabling Qlik users to expand their operations globally with confidence.
Their approach to AI development focuses on trusted data and flexibility, setting it apart from larger competitors like Salesforce, Google, and Microsoft, which have made more aggressive investments.
According to Donald Farmer, founder and principal of TreeHive Strategy, Qlik’s moves have been tactical but well-aligned with the needs of its existing customers. By prioritizing data trust and integration, Qlik is providing valuable capabilities that resonate with its user base.
While Qlik may have fewer data and AI infrastructure capabilities compared to tech giants like AWS, Google, and Microsoft, its strategic focus on data quality and integration ensures that it delivers reliable and trustworthy AI solutions.
This focus on trusted data is critical for businesses aiming to make accurate and informed decisions using AI-generated insights.
Farmer notes that Qlik’s support for AI has been well attuned to the needs of its existing customers, emphasizing the integration of the Qlik stack with AI platforms they may be exploring.
Qlik Talend Cloud addresses the critical need for high-quality data in AI model training and business decision-making. By ensuring data accuracy and reliability, it helps organizations make better-informed decisions and avoid the pitfalls of poor-quality data.
The inclusion of a data marketplace, data engineering tools with both no-code and pro-code options and a trust score for AI models all contribute to creating a reliable and efficient data integration platform.
Qlik Answers empowers self-service users by enabling natural language interactions with data. Its focus on explainability helps users understand how insights are generated, fostering trust and confidence in the AI-generated responses.
This feature is particularly important for executives and decision-makers wary of potential inaccuracies in AI outputs.
Industry Impact
Qlik Talend Cloud is designed to address the critical need for high-quality data in AI model training and business decision-making.
By ensuring data accuracy and reliability, it helps organizations make better-informed decisions and avoid the pitfalls of poor-quality data.
The inclusion of a data marketplace, data engineering tools with both no-code and pro-code options and a trust score for AI models all contribute to creating a reliable and efficient data integration platform.
These features ensure that the data used to train AI models is high quality and comprehensive, minimizing the risk of inaccurate or misleading insights.
Qlik Answers empowers self-service users by enabling natural language interactions with data. This tool significantly reduces the complexity of data querying and analysis, making it accessible to non-technical users.
By allowing users to ask questions in plain language and receive relevant insights, Qlik Answers reduces the need for coding skills and extensive data literacy training.
The tool’s focus on explainability is particularly important for fostering trust and confidence in AI-generated responses.
By providing detailed explanations of how each response is generated, users can verify the accuracy and reliability of the insights, which is crucial for executives and decision-makers wary of potential inaccuracies in AI outputs.
The ability to handle unstructured data, such as text, images, and audio files, sets Qlik Answers apart from traditional BI tools that primarily focus on structured data.
This capability allows organizations to leverage a massively untapped pool of data, providing a more comprehensive view of their operations and enabling better-informed decision-making.
By incorporating unstructured data into their analytics processes, organizations can gain insights that were previously inaccessible, leading to more innovative and effective business strategies.
Qlik’s focus on trusted data and flexible development tools ensures that the AI models and applications built using its platform are reliable and secure.
The trust score for AI models, based on an assessment of the underlying data quality, helps organizations ensure that the AI-generated insights are accurate and dependable.
This focus on data trust and quality is essential for organizations aiming to make critical business decisions based on AI-generated insights.
By enabling natural language interactions with data and ensuring the reliability of AI-generated insights, Qlik is helping to democratize data access and analysis.
This democratization allows a broader range of users within an organization to leverage data for decision-making, driving more widespread adoption of AI and analytics tools.
The result is a more data-driven culture within organizations, leading to improved business outcomes and a competitive edge in the market.
Qlik’s partnership with AWS further enhances the platform’s capabilities by providing access to advanced AI development tools and foundation models.
This collaboration ensures that Qlik users can leverage the latest advancements in AI technology to build robust and innovative AI applications.
The integration with AWS’s cloud and generative AI capabilities also provides scalability and flexibility, allowing organizations to expand their AI initiatives and operations with confidence.
Qlik’s strategic focus on trusted data and user-friendly AI tools positions it well to meet the evolving needs of its customers and drive the future of enterprise AI development.
What to Expect?
By bridging the gap between structured and unstructured data, Qlik aims to deliver the “holy grail of analytics,” allowing users to derive richer, more nuanced insights from their data.
In addition to this integration, Qlik plans to continue enhancing its AI capabilities to support edge computing and cater to developers.
Edge computing, which involves processing data closer to its source rather than in a centralized data center, can offer significant benefits in terms of speed, efficiency, and real-time data analysis.
By enabling decentralized computing, Qlik aims to provide organizations with the tools they need to process and analyze data at the edge, unlocking new opportunities for innovation and efficiency.
Developers are another key focus for Qlik’s future plans. Historically, Qlik has not heavily targeted the developer community, but this is set to change.
By providing more capabilities and tools tailored to developers, Qlik aims to foster a vibrant ecosystem where developers can easily build, test, and deploy AI models and applications.
This move is crucial for expanding the use of AI in enterprises, as developers play a key role in creating custom solutions that address specific business needs.
This involves not only enhancing the technical capabilities of the platform but also ensuring robust governance and compliance frameworks to protect data and ensure its ethical use.
As AI becomes more integral to business operations, having secure and responsible AI development practices will be essential for maintaining trust and avoiding potential pitfalls.
