Gartner Magic Quadrant
Qlik vs Microsoft
The 2024 edition of the Gartner Magic Quadrant is out again. In this article we zoom in on the differences between Qlik at Microsoft.
Qlik and Microsoft both recognized as leaders
In Gartner's latest Magic Quadrant report, Qlik en Microsoft both recognized as leaders in Analytics and Business Intelligence (ABI) platforms. While both companies are leaders, the report highlights significant differences in their approaches, strengths, and challenges. This article will help you understand the differences.
Microsoft according to Gartner
Microsoft is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. The primary ABI platform, Power BI, has enormous market reach and momentum thanks to integration with Microsoft 365, Azure and Teams, flexible pricing, above-average functionality and an ambitious product roadmap.
In 2023 announced Microsoft Fabric to provide a comprehensive and integrated data analytics platform. As a result, Power BI is now part of a broader suite that delivers data management, data science, and real-time analytics in addition to ABI. While there will be no change to the capabilities of the Power BI Premium product, starting July 1, 2024, customers will no longer be able to purchase the P SKU and will instead need to purchase the F SKU for Fabric.
Qlik according to Gartner
Qlik is a leader in this Magic Quadrant. Qlik Cloud Analytics is offered as a SaaS platform and includes Qlik sense, Qlik AutoML and Qlik Application Automation. Although Qlik While it is still widely recognized for its analytics capabilities, its recent acquisition of Talend and the earlier acquisition of Attunity also make it a formidable data integration provider.
Qlik has invested significantly in AI and launched in September 2023 Qlik Staige. Staige combines a data foundation, automation and AI-based descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics to accelerate the delivery of decision-driven solutions. In November 2023, Qlik Microsoft Fabric connectors and an Insight Advisor chatbot integrated with Microsoft Teams. Qlik also released AWS Bedrock connectors. In January 2024, Qlik Kyndi, a platform for NLP, search and generative AI.
Strengths
Strong combination of price, functionality and ecosystem: Over the past four years, Microsoft has become the dominant vendor in the ABI platform market through a combination of low prices, extensive functionality, and integration with a widespread ecosystem that includes Microsoft 365, Azure and Dynamics.
Copilot brand closely linked to generative AI: Starting with Copilot for Microsoft 365 and now continuing to Copilot for Power BI, Microsoft can leverage emerging generative AI technologies to drive adoption and accelerate the reporting process.
Powerful portfolio and product ambition: Microsoft has a clear vision for cross-using Power BI, Power Apps, and Power Automate to create business value. Power Apps can be embedded in Power BI dashboards, or they can access Power BI datasets. Power Automate flows can be built to take different actions based on the data. AI-powered services, such as text, sentiment, and image analysis, are available within Power BI Premium.
Strengths
End-to-end data and analytics: Qlik continues to enhance its data foundation with the acquisition of Talend and the formidable data integration of that. Add to that a significant leap forward in data science integration and a top-tier position in LLM integration, and it is clear that Qlik has created a powerful data-to-decision workflow for enterprise developers and analysts.
Regained market recognition: Qlik has managed to gain prominence through notable strategic acquisitions, most notably the acquisition of Talend for data integration. Qlik ranks among the top five companies in terms of revenue for both ABI platforms and data integration tools.
Cloud and application agnostic: Qlik is offered as a service across all major clouds, including Alibaba Cloud. It also has integration with many major enterprise cloud applications. Qlik can be a comfortable choice for organizations with multi-cloud deployments with a wide range of enterprise applications.
Microsoft Points of Interest
Governance of content creation and publishing: Gartner continues to receive a significant number of questions from Power BI customers who are struggling to manage the analytical content creation and publishing process. These concerns will be exacerbated in the Copilot era. Customers are concerned about the many ways to accomplish most tasks, such as data modeling or content promotion. For example, data modeling tasks can be performed with datasets, data marts, data flows, and Dataverse. With its low cost and easy installation, Power BI deployments tend to proliferate quickly, making it difficult to enforce standard governance practices.
Unproven interoperability: While most Power BI customers appreciate the tight integration of the Microsoft architecture, there is an increasing demand for greater interoperability with competing platforms. Microsoft Fabric's OneLake architecture is a step in the right direction toward interoperability with other data management platforms. However, how well OneLake will perform with other databases remains to be seen.
Azure as the only deployment option: Microsoft does not offer customers the flexibility to choose a cloud IaaS offering. While data connectivity enables multi-cloud and hybrid scenarios, Microsoft’s Power BI service runs only on Azure.
Points of attention Qlik
Lack of momentum in the analytics market: Qlik's progress as a popular analytics platform appears to have slowed, losing market share in recent years. It remains to be seen whether the recent acquisition of Talend and the focus on expanding AI capabilities will reverse this trend.
Lack of a cloud or application ecosystem: Many buyers prefer tools that integrate well with their enterprise application or cloud platform provider’s D&A ecosystem over tools with unique features. Despite its cloud-agnostic approach and partnerships, the lack of a cloud services infrastructure or enterprise applications (e.g., CRM/ERP) limits the sales strategy of Qlik for enterprise customers.
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