u/meatmick

We've been on Qlik Sense for 6 years, 4 of those on their cloud platform, and I think it's time to re-evaluate where we should be heading.

Here are a few things that make me want to move elsewhere:

• Currently using SQL Server 2017 as a data warehouse. It works, but it's starting to be limiting for internal reasons outside my control. I'm aware you can build your own "data warehouse" in Qlik using load scripts, but it's not great.
• The Execs never bought into the tool, and they want to stick to Excel. It's been 6 years, and we've tried to accommodate them, but it just doesn't stick.
• Their prices are getting more and more bonkers every release, and they keep trying to justify their increases by selling us more shit we won't use.
• After 6 years, users still don't understand set analysis, and newcomers see the syntax and run away.
• It has poor email capabilities (note that I didn't say none) unless you buy third-party add-ons or pay a fuck-ton of money to Qlik for capacity.
• Our company policy prevents users from creating their own apps from scratch, which means we, the BI team, are fully in charge of making the data models for them. They can do self-service, but inside what we create. This has obvious pros and cons.
• We had an awesome buy-in for the first 3 years, coming from Cognos, where I started putting a lot of "never seen before" datasets in the tool to attract users on the platform.

Now the user count is dwindling — we're down to maybe 10 slightly active writers and hundreds of readers who go in, download to Excel, and get out.

Why not Power BI?

I think PBI is just a side upgrade vs Qlik. Also, we're using Google, not Microsoft, for our company tools. I'm aware it's in the right spot on the Gartner chart, but considering how it's basically "buy your spot on the chart", it's sort of meaningless.

Where I'd like to go

I'd like to move to a cloud warehouse for small data (we're at 1.5 TB before any compression), such as Motherduck, and leverage the power of the cloud tools to move to something like Sigma or Omni.

Why Sigma or Omni? My top 3 reasons:

1. Not having to mess around with reloading the warehouse, then reloading another proprietary data set in Qlik/PBI is a big win here, allowing for faster load times for some of our workloads.
2. They seem very Excel-like in the way they work.
3. Emailing capabilities to send reports to the older execs who refuse to use anything but Excel.

My questions for you:

• Do you know those tools, and have you used them?
• How has your experience been with them?
• What does the pricing structure look like?
• Am I wrong in saying PBI is not where we want to be heading?

Thanks!