The recent acquisition of Attunity is another clear sign of Qlik’s data management goals and will likely attract new users looking to combine big data and analytics within a single platform.

The BI and data visualization business have added the Israeli integration and data management company, enhancing its competitive potential within the data management market and potential to attract users seeking an integrated data platform.

The Attunity acquisition, valued at $560 million comes after a series of other deals, including the purchase of AI chatbot Crunchbot and startup data management business, Podium Data. Industry experts believe these deals are a clear indicator that Qlik intends to strengthen its portfolio to compete with one of its largest competitors – Tableau. Doug Henschen, an analyst at Constellation Research believes the recent deals highlight Qlik’s goals to become a bigger and more diverse technology business. Henschen explains that the recent deals enable Qlik to offer data management on a bigger scale and at the same time, develop analytics along with all this added data. In a recent media statement, Qlik explained how Attunity can deliver data in real time, within a range of cloud and data systems as key factors for planning the acquisition.

How will this affect Qlik users?

The integration with Attunity will likely attract users within financial services, healthcare, manufacturing and retail industries. Features such as change data capture technology that handles low-latency needs and data migration potential will support users with cloud projects.

Henschen does highlight, however, what impact all of these acquisitions are having on the core function of the business. Existing customers need to be assured that Qlik is not losing focus and is continuing to develop and invest in its main analytics tools and also exploring other capabilities such as cloud deployment and AI augmentation. In the last year, Qlik provided an analytics product road map and users will require regular updates on progress and future plans in this area.

It is unknown how Qlik will present the Attunity system. The recent relaunch of the Podium Data technology was created via a singular product, referred to as the Qlik Data Catalyst and may be a sign of what to expect in future product launches.

The acquisition is due to be completed later this year. Qlik has made it clear it aims to explore new markets, including the data lake arena, which holds significant competitors include Microsoft Azure and AWS, along with a range of established data management software companies.

Other competitors are not falling behind, however, with Tableau recently launching its own data management service called Tableau Prep Builder and Tableau Prep Conductor data preparation tools, along with the Tableau Data Management Add-on bundle. Tableau is taking the approach of working ‘top-down’, using internally developed research and development to build new products. Qlik, on the other hand, is acquiring assets to expand its data management portfolio from the ‘bottom-up’.