Wednesday, March 07, 2012

BI Vendor QlikTech Reveals QlikView Pricing: I Modestly Help to Clarify

Business Intelligence software vendor QlikTech* officially published its price list last month, after years of keeping it a not-very-closely-held secret. I was personally pleased, since people occasionally ask me what QlikView costs.  But then I looked more closely at the list and realized I wasn’t quite certain what it meant. Happily, it didn’t take long to set up a briefing and clarify matters. Just in case anyone else is also confused, here’s what they told me:

- The lowest entry price for a fully functional version is $1,350. Although this is called a “Named User License”, it does NOT require connection to a server—the specific point I wasn’t sure of. What distinguishes this from the free Personal Edition is that the Named User License can read QlikView files created on other machines, while the Personal Edition cannot. Thus, a company could buy two Named User Licenses for $2,700 and those systems could share files back and forth.  Let me state clearly that as a confirmed QlikView fan, I think this is a terrifically low entry price.

- Companies with many infrequent users can purchase a “Concurrent License” that allows one user at a time for $15,000. This figure is so high that I thought it might be a typographic error, but QlikTech assures me it’s correct. In fact, they say it’s a bargain because they’ve found many clients can share more than 11 users on one license. These would be salespeople or other non-analysts who want to occasionally view a report. It seems to me that Murphy’s Law would ensure they all access the system during the same five minutes – presumably the evening before their monthly reports are all due – but I’ll take QlikTech’s word that this isn’t the case. After all, they're the analytical experts, eh?

- Companies who don’t want to spend $1,350 for casual users have some other options. These include a $350 “Document License” for one user for a single document, a $70,000 “Information Access Server” allowing unlimited users to access a single document (usually over a public Web site), and a $3,000 “Extranet Server Concurrent License” that allows one external user at a time to read documents on an $18,000 “Extranet Server”.

There are various other licenses for larger systems and special purposes. The descriptions are more or less self-explanatory, but of course you’d want to talk to QlikTech itself for detailed explanations.

One thing you definitely won’t find is a free or low-cost  “reader” licence that lets users view but not change a QlikView document. This is a disappointment to me personally, since we at Left Brain DGA use similar readers to send reports to our clients today. I can’t see those clients paying for Named User Licenses or Concurrent Licenses. But QlikTech is philosophically opposed to the idea of a limited-function reader, which it argues “goes against the current trend toward the democratization of software — in which line of business users can become as adept with an analytics tool as any business analyst or developer.” I can’t say I agree: QlikView takes considerable effort to learn, and many business users don’t have the time, need, or inclination to bother. They would be perfectly happy to consume existing reports without drilling any deeper, but are unlikely to pay $1,350 for the privilege.

I can’t judge how much business, other than mine, the lack of reader is costing QlikTech. Surely some people end up buying the full Named User License and using it as a reader, which makes up for some of the people who don’t buy at all. QlikView also has a strong argument that their total cost of ownership is lower than competitors, even at current pricing levels. The company grew 40% year-on-year as of its last financial report, so they’re clearly doing just fine with their existing approach.

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* QlikTech is the company, QlikView is the product

5 comments:

milleplateaux said...

Hi,

Isn't Doc CAL a low cost reader license what you are looking for(350 USD per user per doc)?

David Raab said...

Doc CAL only lets you read one document, and $350 isn't free. But, yes, it could help.

milleplateaux said...

Hi David,
You are right, it is not low cost, it is lower cost compared to a Named CAL. If you need 1,000+ people - document access right (i.e. 100+ people and 10 documents), it becomes very costly at 350,000K!

Eric said...

However, if you had 1000 users viewing 10 documents a piece, you would buy them named cals instead of doc cals, yielding a total cost of $135,000. Like David said, it's not free, but it also isn't just a viewer - you can interact with the data and actually DO something with it. I guess it all just comes down to what people want to do with it.

milleplateaux said...

"Gartner continues to hear rumblings of discontent from QlikTech customers about the structure of its pricing model and its high license cost. Despite its strong market position and compelling value proposition, it is likely to be increasingly difficult for QlikTech to defend its premium price position as competition grows."

QLIKTECH - Garner Magic Quadrant for BI - 2012