Alexey Artemenko: Qlik Sense will become a new word in the market of BI systems

TAdviser: Two years ago, when we discussed that such Business Discovery, this term still occasionally needed explanations. How does it seem to you, now the concept of business discovery got accustomed in local market enough, its advantages are estimated by the companies?

Alexey Artemenko: When last time we spoke about the concept of Business Discovery, I mentioned its characteristics – simplicity of the interface, speed, flexibility and interactivity of work, an opportunity using one application to receive the answer not only to the question "What?" and also to the question "Why?" that is already in fact sign of diagnostic analytics, but not just descriptive. Such approach as showed time, more we mean and it is valuable to business users at acceptance of management decisions that the number of partners and customers in the territory of Russia and the CIS allowed our company to increase for last two years more than by 3 times, and, above all, to gain recognition and an appreciation from our clients.

TAdviser: Several months ago Qlik submitted the new concept of natural analytics of Natural Analytics. Whether correctly we understand that this logical development of the ideas of the company of rather intuitive data analysis?

Alexey Artemenko: I would tell that this logical development of our technology and architectural approach to a product – to make it the most clear, convenient and natural tool at decision making. Such approach allows:

First, to make discoveries using establishment of associative communications and comparisons. A system intuitively directs the user to those answers which they look for, and allows to open new and unevident communications in data. Users can easily see patterns, detect disagreements or come to unexpected conclusions.

Secondly, to make decisions thanks to joint work opportunities. Interactive live discussions of data allow users to come to consensus, to interact with each other that as a result can lead to quality improvement of the made decisions.

Thirdly to work thanks to a possibility of interactive belief. As using Natural Analytics the user easily sees now interrelations, he can draw conclusions and recheck them using other interrelations that he as a result induces it to emergency actions. It has no need to put a discussion away for later (in offline), to create new reports and visualization as practically any question finds the answer immediately during the presentation or a discussion.

TAdviser: How will implementation of the new concept be reflected in a line of software products of Qlik? The Qlik Sense platform which should appear in the market at the end of 2014 will be the embodiment of this new concept?

Alexey Artemenko: Certainly. We in Qlik'e believe that our new Qlik Sense platform which, by the way, is absolutely new product, but not the next upgrade of the current version of QlikView 11 will dominate in that niche of BI platforms which will be in the increased demand in the market. This niche is between tools on data visualization and difficult BI platforms with the static reporting. We aim to create the correct balance between ease of use, on the one hand, and power a solutions enterprise, with another. As far as we will manage it, the market will estimate already in the nearest future. Recently the free desktop version of Qlik Sense Desktop which can be downloaded on our website became available.

TAdviser: The Qlik company was among the best solution providers for a mobile business intelligence according to Ventana Research in February of this year. Tell, please, how demand for mobile analytics in Russia develops? What your solutions in this area are demanded now or how you expect, will be demanded in the future?

Alexey Artemenko: The mobile business intelligence is for today, perhaps, subject number 1. So practically each customer requires to optimize the platform under use on mobile devices that we together with our partners successfully do. By the way, customers do not have need to buy for this purpose the special license – everything is already included in basic cost. By the way, our new Qlik Sense platform is initially optimized for work on mobile devices, and already our customers will be able shortly to appreciate advantages of new mobile analytics.

TAdviser: In an interview of year before last you said that the company intends to advance actively the solutions for large business. Whether this strategy was repaid? I know that large projects were implemented in an oil, insurance sector: in what else?

Alexey Artemenko: Absolutely justified. Except projects in an oil and gas and insurance segment which you mentioned there are large projects in a public sector, segments of retail and pharmaceutics, projects in telecoms, banks, medicine and transport begin. Already, perhaps, it is difficult to find an enterprise segment in Russia where we would not be or did not hear about us. In parallel we continue to implement large-scale pilot projects on hundreds and thousands of jobs – it allows our customers to gain in very short terms (on average such project takes month) essential effect for business and to see advantages of the solution even during its testing.

TAdviser: Tell, please, how support of Russian-speaking users develops? What channels of support are available to your clients, are how quickly ready to react to requests?

Alexey Artemenko: Already several years at us not only the interface of the platform is Russified and also documentation and help is translated. Besides our office regularly provides trainings for developers, administrators and designers in Russian. In the near future the Russian office will also be able to offer our clients of service in consulting by forces of our specialists.

TAdviser: Qlik works not only at the Russian market, but also in other CIS countries. It would be interesting to learn what is proportional the number of customers in the adjacent countries – Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and so on. The companies in these markets are how ready to automation of the business analysis?

Alexey Artemenko: Speaking about our business in the CIS, I would note progress which our partners in Ukraine and in Belarus achieved. Also we have a number of projects in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Georgia. And let their share is yet not so considerable, from year to year it grows that allows us to expand actively a partner network and our own support in the CIS countries.

TAdviser: For Qlik in Russia and the CIS what now remains in attention focus what will be the most important for the next year?

Alexey Artemenko: This year it will be, certainly, start of our Qlik Sense platform which, we trust, will be a new word on BI the market and will allow us not only to provide to our clients at most conveniences in work, flexibility and return from investments, but also to fix our leader positions in the market of the systems of the class Business Discovery.