QlikView

Qlik has been around for over 2 decades and QlikView has been a BI solution of choice for enterprise-level companies who can utilize its various capabilities. 1. One feature which distinguishes Qlik from the competition is the in-memory analytics. Its powerful associative dashboard and search capabilities can pull data in-memory and, therefore, you end up saving the cost of setting up a separate data warehouse. 2. Qlik offers good third-party integration and can connect directly to widely used data sources, including Salesforce, Hadoop, and Google BigQuery. 3. It will handle huge sets of data with a breeze but there is an additional hardware cost associated with it. However, you will appreciate the performance and no delays in data discovery. 4. Qlik data manipulation capabilities eliminate the requirement for an additional solution to clean the data before visualization. 5. It supports various charts and visualizations. It can easily compete with visualization from other solutions.

1. The most common complaint with QlikView is that it is difficult to learn and operate. You will need a specialist for data management and mapping. 2. QlikView is demanding on hardware and will increase the overall cost of maintenance. 3. The calculations and expressions are sheet specific and have no re-usability. This is something they have fixed with Qlik Sense. 4. Error tracing on data load crashes is very complicated. 5. Qlik’s outdated user interface is also a turn off for business users. It can be overwhelming for a non-technical person who is just looking to analyze data. Again this has been corrected in Qlik Sense. 6. For small and medium Organizations pricing will be a hindrance thus making it exclusively an Enterprise level product. The licensing is user or token based and can be confusing at times. Although the concept behind token based pricing is noble, it can be hard to manage for Organizations.

If you’re looking for an affordable BI solution then I will not recommend QlikView to you. Similarly, it's not an option if you are looking for a solution which can be adopted easily across various functions and departments. In fact, the success of Tableau has meant that the company is focussing more on its new offering Qlik Sense and it would make more sense (no pun intended) in evaluating Qlik Sense.