The rise of digital and the four tectonic technological shifts: Innovation continues at a breakneck pace, requiring business leaders to manage change as emerging technologies become more commonplace. We are currently in a phase of digital transformation, and every business is going through a transition. New technologies have fueled globalization, redefined our concepts of software and computing, lowered costs, and fueled data-driven decision-making.
In this blog post, I’d like to talk about four of these tectonic technology shifts and relevant Qlik product innovations that could pave the way for new analytics use cases.
Cloud Computing vs. Edge Computing
Cloud computing has become a significant trend in the last decade; however, the edge computing trend seems to be slowly pushing cloud computing toward the edge. Much of tomorrow’s analytics will be done locally at the “edge” or multi-cloud. Instead of replacing trends, they will merge and create a blended approach, creating more effective solutions for businesses and consumers.
Part of building analytics solutions with this trend will be determining how and where to apply analytics, especially for IoT use cases, and leveraging an analytics platform capable of supporting both. Here I see many advantages of using Qlik Core. Qlik Core is Qlik’s analytics development platform built around the powerful Qlik associative engine and Qlik-create open-source libraries. The technology is built by leveraging the latest cloud technologies with Linux, Docker, and Kubernetes. With Qlik Core, developers can build analytics solutions that work at the edge (on or near the sensor) for speed; then, by leveraging Qlik’s multi-cloud environment, various data can be sent to the cloud for analysis at scale.
From closed source to open source
Over the past decade, enterprise-wide adoption of open-source software has flourished as more companies realize the tremendous benefits. There are many reasons for this change, including harnessing the collective power of a community of talented people working together to provide more ideas and faster development and resolution when issues arise.
Qlik’s open-source libraries address these needs when developing analytics solutions. Whether it’s loading data (halyard.js), interacting with the associative engine (enigma.js). Or searching for display frameworks (picasso.js), the open-source libraries created by Qlik allow companies to harness the power of the crowd. You can see many innovative solutions designed by the Qlik developer community on Qlik Branch.
From human to machine (AI)
Artificial intelligence is no longer just a futuristic notion, and it’s here now. As humans and intelligent machines increasingly collaborate, work processes become more fluid and adaptable, allowing companies to modify them on the fly or redesign them entirely.
At Qlik, our approach to AI is augmente intelligence, which puts human intuition in the middle of data and advanced algorithms. Qlik’s artificial intelligence technology, Qlik Cognitive Engine, supports users throughout their analytics workflow by streamlining their analytics processes, accelerating insights, and increasing data literacy for all users.
From natural to virtual (AR/VR)
AR and VR are a new reality. Digi-Capital, a leading AR and VR technology research company. Predicts that $90 billion in consumer AR will dominate the $15 billion VR goal by 2022. Although not yet widely used. More companies will soon use these technologies to create meaningful content and experiences for their customers and users. A good example is the IKEA Place app.
To inspire ideas about the possibilities for innovative analytics with some of these tectonic shifts. I’d like to share a Qlik research project we built using Qlik Core.
The solution uses augmented reality and offers a new level of interaction between physical products and users by immersing them in augmented reality. It focuses on the analysis and optimization of shelf space.
In a store, the position of a product can significantly affect its performance. Consuming the proper space allocation for products and categories plays a vital role in the success of your business. From a retailer’s perspective, given the value of shelf space positions. It is imperative to ensure that the retail space is functioning to maximize store value.
With this need in mind, we built a solution allowing the seller to “zoom in,” where they can see product-specific analytics just by looking at it.
The solution integrates Qlik’s associative engine (using Qlik Core) with Microsoft HoloLens. When the user views a product with HoloLens, the system triggers a selection in the data to calculate and visualize product-specific sales and affinity metrics on the fly and displays them in augmented reality. With this information, the employee can immediately decide where to put the product on the shelf.