Qlik Launches Partner Track For MSPs, Promotes Analytics-As-A-Service As New Partner Opportunity

Qlik is adding a Managed Service Provider track to its channel program as it looks to expand opportunities for partners to sell its data analytics software as a cloud service.

The company is also taking a partner-led strategy for about 90 percent of its potential market, streamlining the structure of its partner program and simplifying partner revenue requirements.

The additions and changes to the Qlik Partner Program were announced at Qlik Qonnections, the vendor's customer and partner conference taking place this week in Orlando.

[Related: Qlik Taps Former Infoblox Channel Chief Chris Jones To Be Its New Global Sales VP ]

The new MSP initiative is in response to growing demand from customers who want to use Qlik's data analytics software on a service/subscription basis, said Chris Moore, Qlik's senior vice president of partners and alliances, in an interview with CRN.

"This is the future of analytics delivery and how customers want to consume analytics," Moore said, noting that market researcher Gartner predicts that 14 percent of analytics technology consumption will be delivered through the cloud this year.

"It's going to grow at an extraordinary rate and be one of the primary routes to market," Moore said.

The program provides "an opportunity for partners to grow their sales and profitability in services. The partners really want to deliver their own services," Moore said. (Moore, who previously managed Qlik's Americas channel operations, was just elevated to the channel chief position at the start of this year, replacing Toni Adams who left the company in late 2017.)

Qlik started an MSP pilot program last year with about two dozen global and regional systems integrators participating. Moore said it has been very successful and the company is now ready to expand it to more partners.

Under the MSP track partners will purchase Qlik licenses and then provide the software on an as-a-service basis for their customers, either by hosting it themselves or using a third-party hosting provider such as Amazon Web Services. Partners will purchase the licenses according to a tiered pricing structure with cumulative discounts as MSPs buy more licenses.

Partners can provide other services and products around the Qlik software, including business analytics consulting and data management services.

"Qlik's program is extending our business opportunities by helping us deploy solutions and services in a way never before possible," said Alejandro Martinez, U.S. and Canada CEO at SDG Group, a Milan, Italy-based management consulting firm with a business analytics practice, in a statement.

"The MSP offering will accelerate the deployment of Qlik to customers and enable us to bring customers 'analytics as a service' by combining business, application, data and infrastructure services in a modern and scalable way," Martinez said.

Moore emphasized that under the program partners will own the customer relationship and environment.

The channel executive said some partners are already providing managed services and will join the new program while others have been considering expanding into managed services and this program will help ease that expansion. Moore said he expects some of the industry's larger cloud and telecommunications companies to join.

"We've leveraged the Qlik platform to build several industry-leading analytic applications on a 'next-generation' architecture that provides our clients with access to their data where it exists," said Scott Barnes, a managing director at Deloitte Consulting, in a statement. "This gives us the opportunity to offer our Qlik-powered solutions as a hosted service through a subscription model that is flexible and cost-effective, and matches the way that many clients are buying," he said.

Qlik already provides a cloud-based version of its Qlik software. But that is largely positioned as a "try before you buy" product for small and mid-size customers and partners do not resell it, according to Moore.

The launch of the MSP program is one of a number of changes to the Qlik Partner Program that Moore said are designed to drive Qlik into the broader analytics software market while at the same time making the partner program simpler and more predictable to work with.

Going forward Qlik's strategy will be to focus its direct sales efforts on the largest companies that make up the top 10 percent of the potential market, although Moore noted that even there the company can pursue a co-sell model with partner participation.

Qlik will follow a "partner-led" strategy to cover the other 90 percent of the potential market, relying on partners to identify new customer prospects with assistance from Qlik's sales and marketing operations. (Moore said the direct and partner-led split is closer to 50-50 today.)

The software vendor is simplifying its revenue requirements and discount structures, making it easier for partners to combine sales from different types of Qlik engagements to count toward their discounts and partner tier status.

Qlik is providing lower deal registration and sales performance discount thresholds, giving partners more flexibility in customer negotiations. And it is providing incentives to recruit new customers and offering subscription licensing combined with volume-based pricing.

Finally, the company is combining its Resell and Influencer tracks into a single Solution provider track to streamline the Qlik Partner program's structure.

All the changes are slated to take effect May 9.