Barry Harmsen
Hi there, I'm Barry and I'm a Business Intelligence Consultant at Bitmetric and based in the Netherlands. Originally from a background of 'traditional' Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence and Performance Management, for the past 10 years I have been specializing in Qlik and a more user-centric form of BI. I have done numerous QlikView and Qlik Sense implementations in many different roles and industries. In 2012 I co-authored the book QlikView 11 for Developers. You can follow me on Twitter at @meneerharmsen.
Today PacktPub published a new version of Miguel García’s and my 2012 book, QlikView 11 for Developers. Now released under the version-agnostic title QlikView for Developers, the book can be used for QlikView 11, 11.2, 12 and 12.1. (and given how little love Qlik has shown QlikView recently, probably every upcoming version, if any, after this)
If you own the previous version of the book, and are still on QlikView, you may be wondering “Do I need to get this updated version?“. The answer to that question is “Unless you are a book collector, probably not“.
There are some things about the previous edition of the book that irk me. There are also many things that I have learned since 2012 and would do differently nowadays. Besides the irks, none of these things are in the updated version.
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February 16, 2017 – 22:06
The 2017 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms has been released and Qlik is in the Leaders quadrant for the 7th consecutive year! Besides Qlik, both Tableau and Microsoft return in the Leaders quadrant, where they also were last year.
Comparing this edition with previous year’s Magic Quadrant, we can see that Qlik has lost around 15% on Completeness of vision, while more or less keeping the same Ability to execute. At the same time, we can see that both Tableau and Microsoft have both significantly improved their lead in these areas. I haven’t seen the actual analyst report yet so the reasons for these changes remain speculation at this time. (will update with a link once a vendor releases it for free).
Update 2017/02/22: the full report can be found here.
Looking at the multi-year trend, we can see that Business Discovery has truly become mainstream while the previously dominant ‘Mega Vendors’ have been downgraded to the middle of the pack (look where IBM was in 2013, and where it is now). The positive exception here is Microsoft, which seems to have reinvented themselves in the past few year (Power BI!).
Happy new year to you! Just a very short post today with a little fun and possibly a warning. You may be aware that you can use the Qlik Sense API’s on your Qlik Sense Desktop, but are you also aware that any webpage can access them? The widget on the top right contains some JavaScript that tries to connect to your local Qlik Sense Desktop, if it succeeds the version and number of apps are displayed. (click on the X Applications link for an application browser)
This is just some harmless fun of course, and potentially offers some nice options for Qlik bloggers, for example click to automatically generate an app, online performance analyzer, etc. Just be aware that there could also be more nefarious purposes, for example deleting applications or extracting data. It’s probably very unlikely that someone will target this, but good to keep in mind anyway.
On a different note, Qlik Sense 3.1 SR4 was released yesterday. And, if you’re based in The Netherlands (or willing to travel there) and interested in Qlik Sense web development with mashups, extensions and widgets then we have an interesting training coming up. More info here (in Dutch, but training will be in English, contact me if you’re interested).
Quick event tip: are you based in the Netherlands and interested in (tool agnostic) Data Visualization? If so, check out the Dutch Information Visualization Event (DIVE 2016) on June 23rd in Utrecht. More information (in Dutch) can be found here.
Those who have been following the news around Qlik (the company) lately have probably noticed that something’s been stirring the past few months. It started in March with activist hedge fund Elliott Management disclosed that it had bought a significant stake in the company. Later that month, Elliott raised its share even further and began pushing for a sale of the company. Potential buyers that were named at that time were IBM or Oracle, neither of which seem like attractive alternatives to me.
It became clear to me that a sale was at least considered as an option by Qlik when I saw the updated the severance packages for tier 1 to 3 executives on Qlik’s Investor Relations page on April 1. Meanwhile, rumors about a potential sale were everywhere. Rumors are just rumors of course, but where there’s smoke…
Then things got quiet for a while, until June 1, when the news appeared that private equity firm Thoma Bravo had submitted a 2.8 billion USD bid on Qlik. And today, June 2, things came to a conclusion when it was announced that Thoma Bravo has acquired Qlik for 3 billion USD.
Of course, for Qlik customers, partners and us developers that raises some questions, and maybe even concerns. I decided to put some of my thoughts in this blog post.
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February 12, 2016 – 09:00
The 2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms was released last February 4. This year’s edition caused quite a stir on various blogs and social media platforms as most of the ‘old-school’ vendors were dropped from the Leaders quadrant, leaving only Tableau, Microsoft and Qlik as Leaders.
Many excellent blog posts appeared in the last week, providing further commentary and thoughts on the current state of the BI and Analytics market. Rather than adding another post with my own commentary, I will take a slightly different approach.
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Today was the last day of the 
