Amid ravings of AI hallucination and bias, theories of bots replacing humans, and rumors that the models have quietly stopped learning, the tech industry is aggressively putting AI behind its legion of products and services.
AI’s explosive popularity can mean only one thing – more innovations are heading our way.
AI, a Resounding Theme in Tech
At Qlik Connect 2024 in Orlando, Florida, “there were 129 mentions of “AI” in the keynote,” noted Joey D’Antoni, IT veteran and a long-time Field Day delegate.
D’Antoni attended the event with other Tech Field Day panelists, and Futurum Group analysts, and like his peers, he too was not surprised by the undisguised underscoring of AI.
AI has certainly been a dominant talk in all of the tech shows and events this year. Qlik Connect struck a slightly different chord, however. The panel observed that Qlik leaders decisively steered the conversation towards the burden of responsibility.
In the past few years, data companies have seized the reins of discussion around responsible AI and sustainability. But a handful of companies like Qlik have been spearheading a movement to use AI for the greater good.
Qlik’s deep engagement in AI sustainability is no news. For quite a while, it has been the talk in the press.
“Qlik has an amazing team doing sustainability, and they have been doing it since the company was founded,” pointed out Gina Rosenthal, founder and CEO of Digital Sunshine Solutions, a B2B marketing firm.
Qlik’s analytics platform has been the foundation for building custom data-driven analytics applications for many organizations.
Through the Qlik Corporate Social Responsibility program, the company has engaged with many non-profit organizations helping drive development and value in the areas of economy, society and environment.
“They’ve begun working with the UN Council on climate change to give them the AI tools they need to float things up,” she told.
Qlik has been one of the forces behind UN’s sustainability and humanitarian missions since 2018. The platform provides the UN staff members a self-service portal for data visualization and reporting.
Expanding Analytics Initiatives with Other NGOs
Qlik is working with a growing army of NGOs that provide relief and aid through global crisis like the war in Ukraine, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Qlik has made its software available to these partners enabling them to leverage data for their operations.
Qlik has also thrown its weight behind groups that are addressing and combatting climate change in various parts of the world. For bodies like C40 and UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), the Qlik software provides actionable analytics on global datasets on climate, helping flesh out intelligence and meaning from vast volumes of raw data.
“They have a really nuanced and realistic picture of AI,” Stephen Foskett, president of Tech Field Day commented. “Qlik understands that AI is coming, and they have brought forward their background in ESG and concern for climate change.”
Qlik’s sustainability efforts are further amplified by the company’s choice to deploy AI in a cloud-hosted environment. By training the model on a limited subset of data instead of building it from scratch, it is able to deliver intelligent, precise, data-driven analytics for each use case.
A big part of the brand is the Qlik Community which is a global group consisting of employees, users, experts, partners and technologists. The community provides people a space to connect and interact. Anybody that is a part of the community can tune in and join the chatter, browse resources and obtain support.
“Qlik Connect is showing a complete community,” said Keith Townsend, analyst and thought leader at The Futurum Group.
No-Fluff Messaging
Like its vision, Qlik’s messaging is bang-on. As the rest of the industry is busy AI-washing, Qlik has taken up the initiative to raise awareness about the importance of good-quality data.
“Pretty reports aren’t really meaningful unless you have a good data model behind them,” said D’Antoni.
The measure of data quality is not accuracy alone for Qlik. Qlik takes into account five additional dimensions, namely, diversity, timeliness, security, discoverability and consumability, to define data quality.
Qlik’s marketing is free of the usual puff. Instead of upselling AI like many companies, it has adopted a more balanced approach towards promoting it.
“They’re telling people to not go for the whiz bang at the end because this is going to take some time,” said Rosenthal. “It’s something that works that you’re going to have to construct from your data in business process.”
Steadfast on its mission to democratize data, Qlik is working on making analytics consumable for all, irrespective of their technical know-how.
“It’s made for the data engineers that can get in at the backend and do lots of checking. It’s made for people who have no engineering experience to get things up and started. It’s very low code,” Rosenthal added.
“The emphasis on data quality and some of the technologies Qlik has acquired through the years help take them out of just being a dashboard software company into being a more complete data analytics company and make for a compelling offering,” D’Antoni said.
Acquisitions like Talend, Kyndi and Mozaic Data have generated significant buzz gaining Qlik more mindshare. They have also brought new capabilities to add to the platform making the product more powerful and effective.
Even the Qlik website reflects the same brand distinctiveness that is its identity, points out Jay Cuthrell, founder and CEO of Cuthrell Consulting.
The Qlik Bot on the website serves as not just a finder for the solutions, but also works as a second banner for announcements.
“They pre-position the content for the announcement as the first thing that the chatbot would tell you about, which corresponds with the top of the website banner. Little attention to detail like that tells you just how platform thinking this organization is,” he said.
Be sure to watch the full Qlik Connect 2024 Delegate Roundtable – Data Pipelines for AI. Also check out Qlik’s presentations from the Tech Field Day Experience at Qlik Connect 2024 where Qlik showcases many of its solutions discussed in this roundtable.
