QlikTech to 'consumerise' business intelligence

Business intelligence (BI) software vendor QlikTech has set its sights on an "untapped, consumer enterprise" market currently misusing Microsoft Excel.

According to the company's executive VP Les Bonney, "traditional" BI products by SAP, Oracle, and IBM Cognos relied too heavily on enterprise IT support.

Citing a global, QlikTech-commissioned survey that was conducted by IDC last September, Bonney said users could no longer wait the usual 18 months for a traditional BI implementation.

"Why can't you just Google the enterprise," he asked, calling for fast, user-driven access to information instead of IT-driven reports that took "weeks" to generate.

With traditional BI products being "too heavy a technology solution to have any chance of being successful", QlikTech's staple Qlikview took a "generalist" approach.

It stored a separate, compressed copy of data in-memory and employed associative - rather than hierarchical - search technology to rapidly sift through and deliver information.

QlikTech VP of international markets David Brierley said Qliktech would "consumerise" BI and leave "high-end predictive analytics" to vendors like SPSS.

The company had 15,000 global customers and 515 in Australia, including HCF, Sydney University, NSW Health, Toyota and Telstra.

A free version of Qlikview was offered online for individual use, while a full, perpetual license cost between $US600 and $US1,300 per user depending on the required capabilities.

Brierley said while the software was only "slightly cheaper" than competitors, he claimed that shorter implementation times delivered greater savings.

IDC reported that 44 percent of Qlikview implementations occurred within one month, and another 33 percent - mostly large, global implementations, Brierley said - within three months.

"We're slightly cheaper than the competition from a licensing standpoint, but from a total cost of ownership perspective, we're much cheaper," Brierley said.

Swedish-founded Qlikview floated on the NASDAQ on 16 July at $US10. Yesterday, the company's share price was US$23.25.

"It's been an unbelievable response in the market, and somewhat scary too," Bonney said, highlighting a 2009 revenue of US$157.4 million, and 60 percent year-on-year growth in the first half of this year.

With IDC valuing the market at US$8.6 billion in 2010, 72 percent of which remained largely untapped, Bonney said "the addressable market is enormous".