Thanks neo.lee for your reply,
Business opportunity for Qlik (good point): If I was Qlik, spectator of a declining OS architecture (Windows Server), and willing to conquer new markets where often the sysadmins drive the procurement in the software choice. I will consider Linux as an opportunity more than a burden. Qlik Sense has some minors original sins in the quality of the solutions, because of Windows: the faulty default Windows authentication, slow restarting process, a conceptual legacy architecture based on "domains" that is fading out. Young competitors like AWS QuickSight, ElasticSearch (cloud native, snappy, price aggressive with flexible billing, Linux or multi-platform) are moving fast: even still too young and too far from Qlik Sense. After, all I'm a proud customer of Qlik Sense.
Authentication: I'm already using SAML2 with our corporate ForgeRock OpenAM for the production server. OpenAM is very versatile: users can log in with any options, we control password-less sessions for our mobile apps; huge, rocky, not easy to climb.
For Qlik, there was just a traumatic approach for the first installations using default Windows authentication:
- on a non-Windows computer (browser form) is extremely faulty (white pages force the user to log in many times; the user press enter on the browser and even worse; 1-2 minutes of user panicking, and in my case an automatic call to IT Helpdesk).
- Non-customizable login page with Qlik Sense log is a 'joke' of some Qlik Marketing 'genius'. What is the point to force Qlik Sense logo with a proxy compiled (.exe) interface (Javascript, CSS, images in base 64) and license enforcement (this is what they say in some thread)? And then? Custom authentication and the logo 'puff' vanishes? Not really serious. Advertising on my paid license? Really? How can I explain that to my users (1500$ per token); managers in the communication and marketing industry, perfectionist of user interface? What should I tell to them? One MD, just at the login page added: "Let's change this Qlik, I already don't like it".
- Login with domain\user. The black slash is an offense for non-Windows users and is a complication for smartphone users ("\" is not in the first layout or even the second layout of the touchscreen onscreen keyboard)
- "Domain" is an old concept that doesn't work anymore in the modern real world, and not even in the IT. My largest client is a conglomerate multinational with about 10,000 users who span on multiple companies, multiple countries with dozens email alias per user and user/password credentials; users moving from one entity to another continuously and with a turnover of 20% by month (including also clients and suppliers) in a huge federated ID manager with more than 50,000 unique entries. In the modern world, nobody work for 1 company in 1 domain. This is an American-corporation-style from the '80s. Are you working for only 1 entity and in only 1 domain?
Keep it simple: I believe that Qlik should offer an easy solution for default (out-of-the-box) authentication: an internal simple directory service (just a table: user, email, password, groups, attributes) managed with QMC not related to the Windows users. Also, we know that Windows security hassles are in the everyday chronicles.
Self-Preservation and opposition to change: I understand the thousand of sysadmin and tech experts tried to block the progress to self-preserve their jobs and lifespan investment in outdating skills. I don't think Qlik should recycle, or crush that (also with Qlik View users that are paying the bill). Some companies did it and failed. (note: the title of the thread is defiant on purpose to attract more posts 🙂 ).
Options, not alternatives. More options will attract more potential clients and will give the chance to legacy clients to migrate if the want (or not). In the 2-3 years when QSE Linux will be at 90% and QSE at 10%, and all the big clients already migrated, then Qlik could consider to clean-up and remove Microsoft 20th century trail.
Gut Feeling: My job in the last 20 years is entirely based on migrations of enterprises from past to new techs, from popular to best. QSE Win to Linux is just matter of time.
Sorry, if I didn't comment on the other specific solutions that you proposed, but for some, I'm not an expert.
My teammate is evaluating Cognito (not yet in my AWS Singapore) that looks interesting, we are just worried about versatility to handle extraordinary cases that don't fit in the common organization schema. Did you already try it?
QSE cluster: I will be there soon, now I'm still enjoying the vertical scaling of AWS (just pick a more powerful instance type). We are often using Direct Query to a Redshift cluster on the same VPC; QSE Repository is not reaching yet 40-GB of data that fit in memory easily. But it won't last long, soon QS cluster will be the solution.
Thanks.
Vicio
