Keep Your Head in the Clouds

[Michael_Tarallo]

3 minute read

♫ Ding Dong! ♪ It’s here! I tore open the Amazon package to reveal my new Nest Cam. It was so shiny. I could not wait to set it up. One of the most innovative features it provided was state-of-the-art surveillance software and video history running from within a hosted cloud solution. It basically was plug and play. While I was setting up my camera this past weekend it made me appreciate how far cloud technology has come and sparked some initial thoughts on our own cloud-based solutions. I wanted to share some of these with you and give you a glimpse into Qlik’s cloud-based future.

A Brief History of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has grown in popularity over the years however, a steady increase has only been seen within the last 6 years or so. The arrival of Salesforce.com in the late 90s paved the way for software companies to deliver their software over the internet, by collecting data in the cloud and therefore Salesforce created the space for cloud CRM and ERP.  In the early 2000s we saw Amazon Web Services (AWS) and (Elastic Cloud Computing) EC2 offer cloud-based services for computation, storage and virtualization. This helped many organizations reduce costs and allowed IT departments to focus more of their attention on pressing business matters. With the increase in bandwidth and a maturing internet web specification, logically, browser-based applications soon followed. (Anyone remember how cool it was to first use Google Docs??)

So why am I telling you all this?

Because…."As cloud computing extends its reach beyond a handful of early-adopter Google Docs users, we can only begin to imagine its scope and reach. Pretty much anything can be delivered from the cloud." - Cloud computing pioneer Jamie Turner.

That’s right, anything can be delivered from the cloud, and Qlik is building cloud solutions that will support the future. We are seeing a shift in data gravity to the cloud so now cloud analytics makes much more sense, pun intended. Sure there were some early movers who just took on-premise software and packaged it in cloud-style – but they were not engineered to be cloud first and some still aren’t. That being said - Qlik Sense is truly a cloud analytics product that was built to work within virtualized and global environments.

Qlik Sense Cloud

That brings me to Qlik Sense Cloud. A global, fully operational cloud analytics solution that you don’t have to setup or maintain. Quickly approaching 100,000 users from over 170 countries, this is definitely no passing fad and it will only get better. If you look at the evolution of Qlik Sense Cloud from its early release in 2015 to now – you have seen a tremendous transformation in a very short period of time. In little over a year Qlik Sense Cloud has evolved from a simple read-only app sharing platform to a 100% online analytics and collaborative solution. In January 2016 we introduced Qlik Sense Cloud Plus, offering more storage, larger apps sizes, unlimited shares and access to our Data As a Service offering, Qlik DataMarket (providing easy access, cloud-based, syndicated external data, directly into your analysis).

Continuing down this path of innovation, later this year we will have Qlik Sense Cloud Business, enabling groups and teams to create, manage, and collaborate with visual analytics in the simplicity of the cloud.  That’s right, workgroups. You will be able to privately manage your own data and applications, schedule data refreshes and collaboratively develop with your invited peers, from either inside or outside your organization.  You can check out the Qlik Sense Cloud Business product preview available in the Qlik Community (requires community login).

AND - It just keeps getting better… with the acquisition of Industrial Codebox (makers of the popular QVSource data connectors for Qlik) – we plan to integrate a number of cloud-based data source connectors such as Salesforce, REST, Google, Facebook, Twitter and many more. Further out on our roadmap, we plan to integrate Qlik Market to enable 1-Click Application solutions provided by Qlik Partners, similar to what you see on many web hosting platforms that offer 1-Click installation for blogs, databases, shopping carts and portals.

The future is bright my friends, and the old idiom “Get your head out of the clouds” does not apply here. If the best and brightest minds stopped dreaming, they might've never dreamt what is possible today with cloud computing, and you and I should thank them for that. I implore you, keep your head in the clouds and see what the future has to offer.

Happy Qlikking,

Michael Tarallo (@mtarallo) | Twitter

Senior Product Marketing Manager
Qlik