Qlik On-Track To Complete Talend Acquisition, Accelerate Channel Momentum

Qlik’s plans to go public, however, remain on hold while the data analytics and integration tech company waits for a more favorable time for an IPO and for stock markets to recover from their 2022 swoon.

Qlik, a leading provider of business analytics and data integration software, is set to complete its acquisition of Talend, a developer of data and application integration software and data management tools, by midyear.

Qlik CEO Mike Capone, in an interview with CRN prior to this week’s QlikWorld conference, said Qlik and Talend are still seeking approval for the deal from regulators in France, but don’t expect any problems and the executive said the acquisition should close sometime in the middle of the second calendar quarter.

“We fully expect that deal to close sometime in Q2, in the middle of Q2, hopefully, and we’re off to the races on integrating it,” Capone said.

[Related: Qlik Steps Up Data Integration Efforts Through ‘Connector Factory’ Initiative]

Qlik and Talend announced the acquisition plan in January but did not disclose the deal’s value. At the time the companies said they expected the acquisition to be completed in the first half of 2023.

The acquisition brings together two big data companies owned by private equity giant Thoma Bravo: Qlik has been owned by Thoma Bravo since 2016 while Thoma Bravo bought then-publicly held Talend in September 2021 for approximately $2.4 billion.

Once the acquisition is complete Capone said he anticipates that integrating the two companies – both from a business and a product line perspective – will proceed rather quickly.

“We’ve been planning this for quite some time. I have had my eyes on Talend for years, to be totally honest,” the CEO said. “The technologies are extremely complementary…We already have done the technical diligence on how we’re going to put the products together.” And with each company having roots in Europe – Qlik was originally founded in Sweden and Talend in France – Capone added that: “Organizationally, not only are we very complementary, we’re also very culturally compatible.”

The merger will bring together Qlik’s business analytics and data integration software and Talend’s data fabric platform that includes data management software, tools for data integrity and governance, and data and application integration software.

The expanded product offerings are likely to strengthen Qlik’s competitive position in the highly competitive business analytics space, including against data analytics and visualization software vendor Tableau, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2019 in a blockbuster $15.7 billion deal.

Earlier this year Salesforce said it was cutting its workforce by 10 percent and media reports in CRN, Bloomberg and elsewhere indicated that Tableau was hit especially hard. Salesforce also has been combining the Tableau channel program with its own.

The expanded Qlik product lineup is also expected to create new cross-sell and up-sell opportunities for Qlik’s channel partners who can knock on customers’ doors with more complete data management and analytics solution, said Molly Burns, vice president of sales and North America partners, in an interview with CRN prior to the QlikWorld event in Las Vegas.

“The anticipated acquisition of Talend will add significant services opportunities for our partners. The data transformation and the depth of work required in those projects are often months-long engagements,” Burns (pictured) said.

“I hope the main takeaway from the conference is exactly this: That the opportunity is here and now for the partner ecosystem.” Burns said. “Qlik is committed to delivering the best technology. We know 2023 is going to be a great year and we definitely want our partners along for the ride. As our portfolio and capabilities continue to grow, we need our partners now more than ever. So really looking at the expanded potential through our offerings and what that means for our partners and for their business.”

Burns said a goal at QlikWorld is to help partners see Qlik as more than a business analytics company and emphasize to partners the advantages and opportunities of its broader product portfolio – both now and following the Talend acquisition.

“I hope one of the takeaways [for partners] from the QlikWorld event is the ability to see the end-to-end data pipeline,” Burns said. “Where we start with the integration piece, right from [data] sources and targets. And what that looks like. And then the anticipated acquisition of Talend expands the services and the potential for more robust [data] transformations. So really having them understand the full breadth of what the portfolio will look like.”

Burns also said that getting partners up to speed on new product capabilities introduced in 2022 will be part of the conference, along with working with new partners Qlik has recruited over the last six to nine months.

Under an initiative launched in mid-2021 Qlik has been expanding its partner program, including adding a cloud services track and reaching beyond traditional resellers by providing opportunities and incentives for co-sell and influencer partners. Burns said Qlik has hired additional partner managers in the last year and has built more “cohesion” between partners and Qlik’s own salesforce.

One thing that doesn’t have a lot of momentum right now is Qlik’s plan to go public in an IPO, first outlined in a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in January 2022. Those plans were put on hold as the stock market cratered last year and IPOs were few and far between.

“We’re quit patient,” Capone said, noting that Qlik’s focus is now on completing the Talend acquisition and the integration work that will follow. “We’ll just keep an eye on things. And if the markets turn around [and] if IPOs come back in favor, and we believe that we can operate better – for us and our customers – as a public company, we’ll dust that off and get back to it.”

At this week’s QlikWorld conference the company unveiled new capacity model pricing, an alternative to the current license-based consumption pricing that is based on such factors as the number of users and data sources and targets.

The new plan better matches how customers want to buy Qlik software and services and enables the use of data throughout an organization by “removing the adoption barriers inherent in a license-based model,” said Josh Good, Qlik vice president of global marketing, in a blog post.

Good said that capacity pricing would help customers balance cost and value “because it puts the emphasis on valuing data.” Where consumption pricing “requires a lot of management from the customer in monitoring and adjusting” usage, Good said, capacity pricing offers more predictability and gives customers “the flexibility to use whatever capabilities they want and more easily try out new use cases before incurring additional charges.”

Qlik is initially introducing capacity model pricing for its Qlik Cloud Data Integration offering and then will introduce it for Qlik Cloud Analytics later this year. “This is a big (and positive!) change to how customers and prospects can purchase Qlik,” Good wrote.

Also at QlikWorld, the company announced an expanded strategic relationship with HARMAN, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co. that develops connected technologies and solutions for automotive, consumer and enterprise business markets. Under the partnership HARMAN and Qlik are jointly developing integrated data and analytics solutions for digital transformation tasks.

Jai Ganesh, HARMAN digital transformation solutions chief product officer, and Annette Jonker, HARMAN senior director digital, analytics, joined Qlik CEO Capone onstage Tuesday during his QlikWorld keynote to provide details about the partnership and the joint development work.

Qlik also announced its Global Partner Awards at QlikWorld including North America partner award recipients DI Squared as solution provider of the year, Natsoft as new partner of the year, IPC Global Services as best enabled partner of the year, Analytics8 as data integration partner of the year and Capital Data as enterprise partner of the year.