Qlik has previewed Qlik Sense Enterprise 2.0, the newest release of its modern, platform-based approach to business intelligence (BI) available in June 2015.
Qlik Sense Enterprise spans use cases across the organisation ranging from self-service data visualisation, to reporting and dashboards, to guided analytics, and embedded analytics, all based on the patented QIX Associative Indexing Engine. At its Qonnections Global Partner Summit, Qlik previewed functionality in areas of self-service data preparation, integrated reporting, and new visualisations.

“Qlik Sense has the potential to expand our business intelligence use case,” says CIO of Omnicom Media Group France, Vincent Cadoret, “Qlik Sense expands the co-creation with the end user, with more self-service possibilities and storytelling while keeping the power of the associativity engine of Qlik and reusing the data models of our existing QlikView applications. Storytelling is very interesting for proving value: it helps to drive a narrative without getting lost in a sea of data. For example, we’re interested in Qlik Sense storytelling for regular steering committees we have with clients to update on media productivity insights and trends.”

Qlik Sense can scale to meet all the needs of businesses as they grow, while maintaining the trust, security and governance that business requires. Qlik Sense was built from the ground up to deliver beautiful visualisations and ease of use for individuals, mobile and collaborative functionality for groups and teams, and enterprise class governance and manageability for the organisation.

Current visualisation tools provide ease of use for the Excel user, but they are not designed to scale, lack data governance and enterprise-class management. Qlik brings a completely different perspective to the BI market through its unique platform approach, giving everyone the ability to answer not just ‘what happened?’, but ‘why?’, as well as providing insight into ‘what is likely to happen.’

“Qlik Sense combines the productivity of personal self-service visual data discovery with the security, scalability, and governance features of production-grade, enterprise-wide BI,” says Anthony Deighton, Qlik CTO and SVP of Products. “This best-of-both-worlds strategy bridges the gap between fast, interactive visual analytics tools and powerful, large-scale production BI stacks.”

Collaboration Drives Pervasive Use
To drive the most value out of visualisation investments, users must be able to easily share analysis. Following Qlik’s recent acquisition of NPrinting, users can now benefit from the ability to print and export content to PDF and PowerPoint, producing reports to share insights in a single click directly in Qlik Sense.

Qlik Sense allows users to pull data from multiple sources in multiple formats and automatically links sources, uncovering hidden relationships within the data. Smart Data Load is a new visual data profiling capability that makes it even easier to bring data from across the organisation together into one application, using a simple interactive user interface. The visual data load editor speeds the ability to get common tasks completed easily with this click-and-go approach that requires no data scripting, while power users will still have the ability to leverage script for more complex use cases.

New functionality includes improved auto-suggestion and ranking in Smart Search, enhancements to functionality in maps, KPI objects and pivot tables. New smart data representation in scatter plots allows summarisation of billions of data points while preserving patterns and meaning in the data.

With Qlik DataMarket users can access a comprehensive library of external data directly within Qlik Sense to allow users to augment and cross reference their internal data to gain context. Also available, Qlik Cloud allows users to share Qlik Sense applications with up to five individuals for free without the need for them to download Qlik Sense themselves.

Qlik Sense Enterprise is part of the Qlik portfolio of visual analytics offerings, which includes:
* Qlik Analytics Platform: Specifically designed to make it easier for developers to build any data-driven app they can imagine with the underlying performance of Qlik. OEMs and developers can build on the powerful QIX in-memory Associative Indexing Engine, with full capabilities of mashup and extension APIs. With this platform they are not confined to the specific visualisation limitations of a tool vendor, but can use this as a toolkit and open platform for whatever they choose to build.
* Qlik Sense Desktop: Free version of the Qlik next-generation data visualisation application that delivers an intuitive drag-and-drop user experience for data visualisation, exploration, and storytelling capabilities in a standalone, installed Windows client. Novice users can get started by simply dragging an Excel document right into the app or by tapping into multiple data sources used within the business. Qlik Sense Desktop is free for personal and business use, with no limits on the number of apps that can be created and no restrictions on file sharing.
* Qlik Sense Enterprise: Qlik Sense Enterprise spans across all business intelligence needs from reporting and self-service visual analysis to guided, embedded and custom analytics. Qlik Sense Enterprise is designed to serve audiences equally without compromise: business users gain the intuitive experience they need, developers gain boundless possibilities for what they can create and IT gains centralised control for management and governance.
* Qlik Cloud: Qlik continues to build out its Qlik Cloud offerings: Qlik Sense Cloud allows free sharing of applications with up to five people; collaboration is being enhanced with the ability to publically share interactive charts through Qlik Sense Charts; and Qlik DataMarket enables seamless access to on demand external data sources.