Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
What is QlikView?
QlikView is developed by QlikTech, a company that was founded in Sweden in 1993,
but has since moved its headquarters to the US. QlikView is a tool used for
Business
Intelligence
, often shortened to
BI
. Business Intelligence is defined by Gartner, a
leading industry analyst firm, as:
An umbrella term that includes the application, infrastructure and tools, and best
practices that enable access to and analysis of information to improve and optimize
decisions and performance.
Following this definition, QlikView is a tool that enables access to information in
order to analyze this information, which in turn improves and optimizes business
decisions and performance.
Historically, BI has been very much IT-driven. IT departments were responsible
for the entire Business Intelligence life cycle, from extracting the data to delivering
the final reports, analyses, and dashboards. While this model works very well for
delivering predefined static reports, most businesses find that it does not meet the
needs of their business users. As IT tightly controls the data and tools, users often
experience long lead-times whenever new questions arise that cannot be answered
with the standard reports.
How does QlikView differ from traditional BI?
QlikTech prides itself in taking an approach to Business Intelligence that is different
from what companies such as Oracle, SAP, and IBM—described by QlikTech as
traditional BI vendors—are delivering. They aim to put the tools in the hands of
business users, allowing them to become self-sufficient because they can perform
their own analyses.
Independent industry analyst firms have noticed this different approach as well. In
2011, Gartner created a subcategory for
Data
Discovery
tools in its yearly market
evaluation, the Magic Quadrant Business Intelligence platform. QlikView was
named the poster child for this new category of BI tools.
