There have been a flurry of QlikView releases lately, with QV10 going to SR3 and QV11 appearing as a Public Beta. It is great to see that the product is actively being developed and is growing – but is it what the installed user-base want and need?
Naturally where there are fixes required to existing software (as there are with any software) it is good to have those fixes made available in a timely fashion. In my opinion the intervals of the service releases seem very sensible – with a new one appearing for each major release every couple of months. Upgrading to these is of course optional, and I typically recommend only upgrading if the client is actually suffering from an issue that is on the list of bugs fixed at any given service release.
It is the major releases that I feel are perhaps a bit too close together. At the moment I am still upgrading users from version 8.5 to version 10.0 (one upgrade I did relatively recently was from 8.5 to 9 as they had been in test for a few months). It seems a bit harsh to me that when these users who have just upgraded go to QlikCommunity they are presented with a banner saying they can download the beta of version 11.
Whilst some of the new features of QlikView 11 sound really useful (such as collaborative analysis via QlikView Server and the ability to cluster non identical hardware) I am not sure that users see lots of major releases as a good thing.
There is certainly a need to keep QlikView ahead of the competition – particularly with visualisations and chart options – but ultimately what users need from a business critical product is stability and reliability over gloss.
I understand that the proposed release date for version 11 is November 11th (11.11.11, naturally) but is it a good idea to let this kind of marketing spin drive a products release cycle?
Maybe it is just me thinking this – I would be very interested in hearing others opinions.
I have currently prototyping our upgrade to QV10(from 9) at work and this PR came out for 11. So now what? Do I wait a little longer and upgrade to 11? Or should I stay the course for 10. Upgrading the Publisher/Server piece is a bit of a pain when you have almost 100 live QV Apps out there.
I personally would go for the upgrade – as there are some great features in 10 (multi-threaded reloads, linked objects and syntax highlighting are very useful), but it may be worth looking at the feature list for 11 to decide if you want to hold off.
Totally agree Steve.
Yet another example of a tech company falling into the ‘if Apple do it then so must we’ – just because Apple have adopted (in the past) a 12mth release cycle doesn’t mean it fits for everyone. Enterprise software (as Qlikview is fast becoming) moves at a much slower pace; as you say you’re still upgrading sites from v8.5.
I sat in on a WebEx by Chris Furlong covering the new features of v11 – some good points but nothing earth shattering in my mind, but two points concerned me:
1. The un-relenting focus on ‘Mobile BI’; I don’t doubt it has a place and I generally like the Safari/Android implementation but in v11 for the first time in v11 we saw UI designed for ‘touch’ being used in the desktop version of Qlikview (AJAX ‘Properties’ box if I remember correctly) – thus the desktop version is touch optimized and suffers as a result – why!? I’d love to know the proportion of Qlikview apps that are truly accessed via tablets (my guess would be well under 5%) so why does the other 95% have to suffer for it? Hopefully this won’t be the start of a slippery slope. I was in a room full of Qliktech partners at Qonnections and someone asked out of the 100 or so people present how many had implemented iPhone /iPad for their roster of clients; 2 people put there hand up. (I do expect the Safari Touch implementations to gain traction as they are at least usable.)
2. On the whole the v11 releases are in my mind focused around Enterprise Mgmt – which is un-doubtedly a good thing however this seems to have been at the expense of the UI; which hasn’t been overhauled in years. In the past this hasn’t been an issue; users had a choice; Qlikview or Excel, BO, Cognos and their bland boring ilk, unfortuntatly this isn’t the case anymore. More and more I’m seeing SiB’s where Tableau, Spatial Key and Spotfire are being mentioned by prospects; all of which have a much better out of the box interface and appear to the end user to be easier to use – which used to be one of Qlikview’s USP’s.
Neatly summed up here: http://andpointsbeyond.com/2011/04/01/can-a-humble-chart-object-get-some-love/
It doesn’t matter how fancy or easy to manage the back-end is if the point at which the data consumers actually interact with their data isn’t up to scratch (or no longer comparable to the competition) then they are going to look elsewhere for their BI…mobile or otherwise.
Matt – Visual Analytics Ltd
Hi Matt – completely agree with regard to the push towards mobile – as evidenced by the Mobile Minutes videos. This is certainly a box that needs to be ticked – but I don’t see it as one of the more important features of the product.
Very good post…
I agree, especially on the need to improve visualisation and chart options. It’s really becoming urgent…
Major and minor releases are of course (usually optional) vehicles for bringing major and minor buckets of functionality to the customer and the marketplace. Personally I would love to see QlikTech on significantly shorter major release cycles – it would simplify getting new functionality out of the door (bullet graphs or what have you.)
I have yet to find a client who doesn’t ‘get’ the statement “new big release, might be some bugs initially, consider letting other customers find them”. Most common response is obviously “yes, let’s be a bit conservative”, but sometimes it’s “I NEED XYZ” instead :-)