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QlikSenseUpdates
Employee
Employee

Did you hear the news?  Qlik® is introducing a continuous release process for Qlik Sense®.

Instead of three releases per year with a dot-zero release in June, Qlik will begin releasing Qlik Sense® every 10 weeks!  Since each release will be similar in scope, we are also replacing our number-based naming convention with releases identified by the month and year they were distributed.  This means that instead of Qlik Sense® 4.0, the June release will simply be called Qlik Sense® June 2017.  (Most other Qlik products will also follow a similar cadence going forward as well.)

With releases five times per year, it might be difficult to stay up to date on what’s new.  To help, we are making a number of changes to help keep you informed.  This blog area is just the start.

Another important opportunity for you to learn about each release is to participate in the release preview process.

A release preview is an early release of our software which is very close to reaching general availability (GA).  It provides the opportunity to try out new features and to test your internal processes on a version of the software that is nearly perfect.  Within a few weeks, the official version will then be released and you can move onto that one with confidence.

As release previews become available, they will be posted to the Product Insight area of community.  If you are logged into your QlikID, you should find a release preview for both the June release of Qlik Sense as well as Qlik NPrinting™ . 


You will want to 'follow' the product insights page so that you are notified immediately of any new previews.  If you have any trouble with access, please contact insight@qlik.com



17 Comments
simondachstr
Luminary Alumni
Luminary Alumni

Preparing, testing, signing-off and deploying a new version of Qlik Sense takes a lot of effort and time, especially in multi-node architectures. To give you an idea, it took us over 3 months continuous effort to upgrade to a newer version of Sense at a large corporation I was working for.

I see the increased frequency of releases more as a concern rather than a benefit.

I appreciate Qlik is keen on releasing new features faster and I definitely see the value of seeing those new things being available to users sooner, but the upgrading process is a huge pain and can possibly do more harm than good.

Frequent releases generally benefit Cloud/SaaS platform, where as with locally installed (on-premise) solutions slow but stable releases are preferred.

If it were up to me, I would have recommended a hybrid approach with two separate release tracks:

  • Qlik Cloud: 10 week release cycle (5 per year)
  • Qlik On-Premise: Stay with the current release cycle (2-3 times a year)
2,192 Views
Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi Martin,

Thanks for your note.  I totally understand your point of view.  My personal background is from a much larger financial services company with about 40,000 servers many of which were globally dispersed applications including many geo-clusters.  I really get it.   Many of our upgrade projects lasted over a year.

Remember that although Qlik will be releasing more often, there is no need for you to take each release.   We do not assume that everyone will keep pace. However, by releasing more often you will still enjoy many benefits:

  • New features which are critical to your operation can be made available to you more quickly.
  • There is no pressure to take the dot-zero release in June.  A recent release will be available regardless of which time of year you choose to work an upgrade into your schedule.  
  • We also believe that our ability to release software more often both demonstrates and will result in more stable software since each release is smaller in scope.
  • If you are still concerned about the stability of a more frequent release cycle, you could always institute a GA-minus-one policy.  However, I think that you will find that this is unnecessary.

You mention an interesting point with Qlik Sense Cloud.  Today, we are actually able to deliver improvements to the cloud more often than every 10 weeks and we will be seeing more and more of this going forward.  Recently, this has been especially true in the area of connectivity where active users have been enjoying enhancements much more frequently. 

Best Regards,

PeggySue

2,192 Views
peterwh
Creator II
Creator II

Hello Martin,

I agree with you. We're discussing the similar problem with the release cycle of QlikView 12.10 (nearly every month a service release. At the moment we'll stay with QlikView 12 (with apparently no further updates), because if you are testing the software, there's already a new release and you don't know, if anythings broken, which you already tested with the "old" version.

Kind regards

Peter

0 Likes
2,192 Views
jfkinspari
Partner - Specialist
Partner - Specialist

I appreciate the decision to move from version numbering to version naming.

It looks like Nprinting keeps its version numbering (17.4 is released in June) while it's planned to be released in the same 10 week cycle as Qlik Sense. Would it not be more simple, to also name Nprinting releases with names by Month and Year?

0 Likes
2,192 Views
Anonymous
Not applicable

Thanks for the note Jens.

This is exactly where we are headed.  In fact, when you access the release preview, you will find that we are referencing the release as Qlik NPrinting June 2017.  You will definitely see this become more consistent over time.

Best Regards

PeggySue

0 Likes
2,192 Views
stevedark
Partner Ambassador/MVP
Partner Ambassador/MVP

As the next release of Sense was referred to as June 2017 a good while back are you not forcing yourself to release at a specific time - even if the product is not quite ready?

What if the technical preview of June 2017 throws up issues?  Is someone going to take the decision to make the June 2017 release GA well into July - or will it be rushed out?

There is nothing worse than seeing a note saying that a release has been recalled from the download site after it has already been downloaded by people.  Not that this ever happens with Qlik...

0 Likes
2,192 Views
dionverbeke
Luminary Alumni
Luminary Alumni

Hi,

I would appreciate it more if Qlik adopted a more modular approach in where all the components can be updated like packages (see atom or r studio).  This allows for a more granular update pattern.

Will be a heck to debug, but it is already like that with 5 releases a year.

Kind Regards,

Dion

1,891 Views
Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi Steve,

Thank you so much for your note.  Yes, you are correct.  There is an inherent risk in using a month as part of the naming convention.  However, Qlik Sense is now three years old and we have yet to miss the month that we have targeted. Going forward, each release is smaller in scope so this should make the delivery process even more reliable.

June is actually the 'trickiest month for us time-wise but even for this release, we completed development near the beginning of May and have been running it internally for some time.  To ensure success, we have baked in a fairly long lead-time between the code freeze and the GA dates.

Who knows, maybe we can have a naming contest if things ever come in late?.... July can be June-Take-Two. Or June-plus-one.

Best Regards,

PeggySue

1,891 Views
Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi Dion,

Thanks for your note.  Your suggestion is interesting and I will share it internally. 

In some ways, the Qlik platform is already quite modular.  Many connectors are already modular.  And of course products like Qlik NPrinting for reporting and Qlik GeoAnalytics for mapping are modular as well.

You are also right in saying that it would be quite a trick to test/debug..... 5 releases a year, 8 products, and "N" modules.... be careful what you wish for

Best regards,

PeggySue

0 Likes
1,891 Views
simondachstr
Luminary Alumni
Luminary Alumni

The modular release approach idea is brilliant Dion which has my support.

0 Likes
1,891 Views