Qlik launches agentic experience to fuel AI-powered analysis
The vendor's latest capabilities, including an insight-generating agent and an MCP server, show that it is evolving to keep pace with current trends in data and analytics.
As agentic AI becomes the new means of building business intelligence tools and analyzing data, Qlik is keeping up with the competition.
On Tuesday, the vendor made its agentic experience generally available in Qlik Cloud.
The suite of capabilities includes the previously available Qlik Answers to provide a natural language interface, powered by the Qlik Analytics Engine, for exploring and analyzing data -- structured and unstructured -- and Discovery Agent, a tool that monitors data and metrics for changes and anomalies so data teams can quickly act to address issues or take advantage of competitive opportunities.
In addition, Qlik's agentic experience features a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server so that customers can connect AI applications they've developed to data in Qlik to inform decisions, and Data Products for Analysis, a feature that monitors curated, governed datasets to ensure quality.
Beyond launching its agentic experience, Qlik recently joined the Open Semantic Interchange , a consortium of data management and analytics vendors committed to creating an open standard for semantic data modeling to make data more consistent and discoverable for AI.
Vendors such as Tableau, ThoughtSpot and Domo likewise provide natural language interfaces and agents that simplify complex, time-consuming analytics tasks. Similarly, numerous vendors -- including GoodData and Sisense along with the aforementioned trio -- now provide MCP servers.
However, whether or not Qlik is the first to offer agentic AI features and tools that enable AI development, the capabilities are significant for the vendor's users and show that Qlik is keeping up with evolving AI trends, according to Mike Leone, an analyst at Omdia, a division of Informa TechTarget.
"This feels like the necessary evolution of what they started with Qlik Answers," he said. "We saw them tackle unstructured data first. Now they are connecting that brainpower to structured data and the agents people will be using every day via MCP. They understand the future is injecting trusted context directly into the messy reality of operational workflows rather than forcing users back into a dashboard."
David Menninger, an analyst at ISG Research, likewise noted that Qlik's agentic experience shows that the vendor is evolving to meet current customer needs.
"It's significant in the sense that agentic AI is the battlefield right now," he said. "Enterprises expect their software providers to be adding these types of features."
Based in King of Prussia, Penn., Qlik is a longtime analytics vendor that added a data integration platform beginning with its 2018 acquisition of Podium Data. In response to surging interest in AI development over the past three years, Qlik, like many data management and analytics vendors, has added AI capabilities and a suite for AI development that now includes its agentic experience.
AI-powered analytics
A strong data foundation is a prerequisite for any AI initiative. Without high-quality data that can be trusted to inform agents and other AI tools, projects will never make it past the pilot stage. In fact, the absence of a trustworthy data foundation is one of the main reasons many AI projects fail.
We saw them tackle unstructured data first. Now they are connecting that brainpower to structured data and the agents people will be using every day via MCP. They understand the future is injecting trusted context directly into the messy reality of operational workflows rather than forcing users back into a dashboard.
Mike LeoneAnalyst, Omdia
As interest in AI development has increased over the past few years, Qlik has made it a priority to help customers create a strong data foundation.
Now, with the general availability of its agentic experience, Qlik is delivering features that build on a strong data foundation to generate insights.
Qlik Answers calls on an enterprise's data foundation to enable AI-powered data exploration and analysis, providing citations and explanations about how it reached its conclusion so users can audit responses. The MCP server enables agents to connect to trusted data to inform their actions. And the Discovery Agent continuously monitors the data foundation for potential insights.
Regarding the impetus for developing the features that comprise the agentic experience, customer conversations and market observations were each factors, according to Drew Clarke, Qlik's executive vice president of product and technology.
"Customer feedback was the spark, but the bigger driver is where enterprise AI is headed," he said. "Teams do not just want another chat interface. They want systems that can reason across analytics and documents, keep permissions intact and explain what they did."
Although it has been generally available for a year-and-a-half, Qlik Answers is perhaps the most valuable feature of the new agentic experience given that it provides users with governed, explainable responses to their queries, according to Menninger.
Regarding Qlik's competitive standing now that its agentic experience is generally available, he added that many analytics vendors now provide similar capabilities with subtle differences that give different vendors advantages in specific niches of AI-driven analysis.
"At this point, there is very little new under the 'AI sun,'" Menninger said. "All the software providers are chasing the same goals of making their products easier to use and helping to automate more business processes through agentic AI. Each will have its own advantages, depending on its existing strengths. For instance, Qlik has the advantage over some of its competitors with its data capabilities."
Leone likewise noted that competitive advantages are subtle, with Qlik's main differentiator its integration of AI-powered analysis with a strong data foundation.
"The differentiator isn't the agentic capability itself since the entire market is heading in that direction," he said. "The real value is likely how they are layering this on top of the foundation they built with Qlik Answers. By ensuring the data feeding those agents is grounded in that same governance and lineage, they are tackling the trust gap that is currently stalling a lot of real-world deployments."
Highlight capabilities, meanwhile, include the MCP server and Data Products for Analytics, Leone continued.
"You need those curated data products to ensure the AI isn't just guessing, and the MCP server is what finally lets that trusted intelligence travel into the apps people actually use," he said.
Looking ahead
With the agentic experience now available, once of Qlik's product development priorities is advancing the feature set by adding more specialized agents and broadening its MCP server's capabilities to connect to more data sources, according to Clarke.
Other focal points include improving its Open Lakehouse to better support high data volumes and streaming data, and further connecting its data integration and analytics capabilities to provide trusted foundation for AI.
While Qlik's agentic experience includes an MCP server to connect agents with data sources, it does not feature a framework such as Agent2Agent Protocol that helps govern how agents interact with one another. Menninger noted that it is important for Qlik and its peers to add such capabilities.
"Most vendors lack strong multi-agent orchestration and coordination capabilities," he said. "MCP is a starting point, but agent-to-agent protocols are also needed as well as the ability to orchestrate the various agents and their activities."
Leone, meanwhile, suggested that Qlik demonstrate that its governance capabilities not only enable agents to respond to user prompts, but also safely act on their own so that customers can improve their efficiency by turning over time-consuming tasks to trusted agents.
"The next frontier for them is proving that these agents can safely take autonomous action," he said. "We're seeing agents that can answer questions, but the real value unlocks when those agents can confidently fix a problem without a human double-checking every step. If Qlik can prove their governance makes that level of automation safe, they solve a massive operational bottleneck."
Eric Avidon is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget and a journalist with more than three decades of experience. He covers analytics and data management.
