Qlik Buys Data Preparation Specialist Podium

Analytics firm Qlik has acquired Podium Data, a specialist in readying enterprise data for analysis. Podium will form the foundation of a Qlik 'hub' offering, with end-to-end capabilities for managing data, understanding and acting on it.

Podium's capabilities include automated sourcing, cataloging, profiling, preparation and publishing of data at scale, both in the cloud and on-premise. Qlik says it is moving beyond analytics to provide solutions that 'democratize data for every user to create a more data literate world'. Features of the new 'hub' will include intelligent data profiling and onboarding; validation, formatting and encryption of incoming data to 'automate data quality'; data preparation and publishing without additional programming; and a smart data catalog featuring tags, business definitions and data lineage for simple location of and 'shopping' for data.

According to Qlik, enterprises are creating 'data lakes' and other complex sources which aren't designed with easy delivery of results in mind and in many cases 'have only increased customer data complexity and management headaches', and quotes a Gartner report saying 'Through 2018, 90% of deployed data lakes will be rendered useless, as they're overwhelmed with information assets captured for uncertain use cases'.

Mike Capone (pictured), Qlik CEO comments: 'You can't be a leader in Business Intelligence and ignore the complexities of data management. Acquiring Podium Data furthers our goal of being the partner to handle a customer's most difficult data challenges, driving both their analytics and data strategy'. Paul Barth, his opposite number at Podium, says: 'The promise of big data to deliver value to the full enterprise hinges on the ability to organize data and make it analytics ready. We're excited to be joining Qlik to marry our data management capabilities with the analytics leader to bring data to life for every enterprise user'.

Qlik is headquartered in Radnor, PA, USA and boasts more than 48,000 customers globally. The firm was itself acquired two years ago, for around $3bn, by equity investment firm Thoma Bravo.

Web site: www.qlik.com .