Technology Reviews

Harnessing the Power of Qlik Sense Cloud for Enhanced Digital Transformation: A Game-Changer in Data Analytics

By Rajesh Munirathnam

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses are constantly looking for innovative ways to maximize their digital transformation efforts. Data is at the center of these transformations, providing actionable insights that drive decision-making, improve operational efficiency, and enhance customer experiences. For organizations already leveraging the QlikView platform, the transition to Qlik Sense Cloud offers an unparalleled opportunity to build upon existing capabilities and explore new avenues of data analytics.

Having successfully led and completed the cloud migration for a leading multinational American medical device company, I witnessed firsthand how a well-executed migration to Qlik Sense Cloud can streamline operations, optimize data usage, and enable real-time insights across the organization. This article outlines the strategic steps in evaluating the QlikView platform, assessing the benefits of transitioning to Qlik Sense Cloud, and examining the critical components of a successful Qlik Sense Cloud deployment, including architecture design, environment setup, security configurations, Proof of Concept (PoC) execution, and cost-saving metrics across various deployment stages.

Evaluation of Existing QlikView Platform

QlikView has long been a trusted platform for data visualization and analytics, offering businesses a robust environment to make sense of their data. However, with the advancement of cloud technologies and the increasing need for real-time analytics, many organizations are finding the limitations of QlikView becoming more apparent. These limitations include on-premise hardware requirements, lack of scalability, and the need for more collaboration-friendly tools.

In the case of the American medical device company, we found that while QlikView was effective in managing historical data and generating reports, it lacked the agility and flexibility needed to handle real-time data demands. This necessitated an evaluation of the platform’s alignment with the company’s long-term data strategy, focusing on the growing need for mobile access, cloud-based collaboration, and integrated analytics.

Assessing the Qlik Sense Solution for the Future

Qlik Sense Cloud is designed to address the growing needs of modern businesses by offering a flexible, scalable, and cloud-native platform for data analytics. The platform’s self-service capabilities, advanced visualization options, and associative data model empower users to explore data freely, without being constrained by predefined queries or traditional data models.

In assessing Qlik Sense for the future, the American medical device company recognized the value of cloud-based analytics in enabling faster decision-making and improving collaboration across departments. With Qlik Sense Cloud’s ability to handle massive data sets and provide real-time insights, the company was well-positioned to enhance its operational efficiency and deliver more personalized customer experiences. The cloud-native infrastructure also aligned with the company’s goal of reducing IT overhead and moving toward more sustainable, cost-effective solutions.

Designed Robust Qlik Sense Architecture for multiple Environments with Scalable Solutions

A well-structured and scalable architecture is crucial for a successful Qlik Sense Cloud deployment. For the American medical device company, I designed a robust architecture that catered to five distinct environments: Development (DEV), Testing (TEST), Sandbox, Quality Assurance (QA), and Production (PROD). Each environment was specifically designed to ensure seamless operation, data integrity, and scalability as the company’s analytics needs expanded.

By designing a scalable architecture across these five environments, we ensured that the company could smoothly transition from QlikView to Qlik Sense Cloud without sacrificing performance or data integrity. This robust architecture also enabled the company to innovate quickly while maintaining operational stability.

Test, DEV, QA & PROD Deployments

In deploying Qlik Sense Cloud, it was critical to establish distinct environments for development (DEV), testing (TEST), quality assurance (QA), and production (PROD) to ensure the integrity of data and system performance. The DEV environment enabled developers to create and iterate on new dashboards and applications without impacting the live environment, providing flexibility for experimentation. The TEST environment allowed for the validation of functionality, performance, and security before advancing applications to the next stages. In QA, we ensured that all applications met the company’s business requirements, compliance standards, and security protocols. Finally, the PROD environment was the live, operational version, where end-users interacted with the dashboards, requiring 24/7 uptime and optimal performance to support real-time decision-making for critical business processes.

Defined Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) Documents for Dashboard Migration and Qlik Sense Qualification

By carefully managing these environments, the transition to Qlik Sense Cloud was seamless, with minimal disruption to the company’s ongoing operations.

To ensure the successful migration and ongoing maintenance of the Qlik Sense Cloud platform, it was essential to create comprehensive Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) documents. These SoPs provided clear, step-by-step guidelines covering the deployment and maintenance processes, ensuring consistency, quality, and compliance throughout the project lifecycle.

The Dashboard Migration SoP detailed the entire process for migrating dashboards from QlikView to Qlik Sense Cloud, including steps for adapting data models, optimizing visualizations, and conducting thorough testing to maintain functionality and performance post-migration. Additionally, Qlik Sense Qualification Documents were developed to outline the criteria for testing and certifying each Qlik Sense application before its production deployment. These documents ensured that functional tests, performance benchmarks, and security validations were conducted to maintain the integrity of each application.

The Qlik App Certification SoP was designed to ensure that each Qlik Sense application met the organization’s standards for performance, usability, and security. This included defining the certification process through user acceptance testing (UAT), compliance checks, and performance stress tests. Only certified applications were moved to the production environment, guaranteeing high-quality analytics for end-users. Lastly, the Maintenance of the Qlik Platform SoP outlined the procedures for ongoing platform maintenance, covering regular updates, security patching, performance monitoring, and troubleshooting. This ensured continued platform reliability and minimized disruptions to the organization’s analytics operations.

Security Configurations Based on User Personas

Security was a top priority in the Qlik Sense Cloud deployment for the American medical device company, especially given the sensitivity of healthcare data. We implemented tailored security configurations based on user personas, ensuring each user had the appropriate level of access. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) was used to assign different permissions to developers, analysts, managers, and executives, restricting access to sensitive data only to authorized users and ensuring compliance with HIPAA regulations. Additionally, data encryption was applied both at rest and in transit to safeguard data across all environments. The platform’s audit logging feature provided comprehensive tracking of user activities, ensuring compliance with internal security policies and external regulations like GDPR and HIPAA.

Assessing and Providing Metrics for Test, Sandbox, Dev, QA & Prod Configuration Cost Saving

One of the major advantages of deploying Qlik Sense Cloud was the significant cost savings achieved across various environments. By migrating from QlikView to the cloud, the American medical device company reduced hardware, maintenance, and infrastructure costs, freeing up resources for other strategic initiatives. Specific cost-saving metrics included:

  • Infrastructure Costs: The move to Qlik Sense Cloud eliminated the need for on-premise servers and storage, resulting in a 25% reduction in capital expenditures.
  • Development Costs: The agility of the cloud environment reduced the time required for development and testing by 40%, leading to lower operational expenses.
  • Maintenance and Support: The company experienced a 30% reduction in maintenance and support costs, as Qlik Sense Cloud handled system updates, patches, and performance tuning.

By optimizing their use of the cloud across the TEST, Sandbox, DEV, QA, and PROD environments, the company realized significant cost savings while enhancing their data analytics capabilities.

Conclusion

The transition from QlikView to Qlik Sense Cloud marks a pivotal moment in any organization’s digital transformation journey. For the American medical device company, this migration resulted in improved operational efficiency, faster decision-making, and significant cost savings. Through careful planning, robust architecture design—including a scalable solution across five distinct environments—secure deployments, and cost-efficient strategies, Qlik Sense Cloud provided a game-changing platform that empowered the company to thrive in the digital age.

The development of detailed SoP documents for dashboard migration, Qlik Sense qualifications, Qlik App certifications, and platform maintenance ensured a smooth and consistent implementation process. These documents, along with a well-designed, scalable architecture, provided the foundation for ongoing success in the company’s data analytics journey.

About Rajesh Munirathnam

Rajesh Munirathnam is a distinguished technology consultant with over 10 years of experience in software development, data analytics, and cloud computing, holding a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. Specializing in enterprise-level applications using tools such as Qlik and Tableau, he is renowned for his innovative leadership in driving digital transformations. His expertise spans across business intelligence, data management, and cloud solutions, contributing to the success of numerous projects in diverse industries. Rajesh is recognized for optimizing processes, delivering impactful solutions, and advancing data-driven decision-making, shaping the future of business intelligence solutions with a focus on enhancing operational efficiency.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed are my own and do not reflect those of my current or previous employers.

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