Qlik Answers aims to enable data-first AI adoption model

There’s no question that generative AI has transformative potential. But first, companies must adopt better data management foundationally at many different levels.

That’s where QlikTech International AB hopes to step in with Qlik Answers. It’s a generative AI knowledge base and assistant that business users can build and deploy themselves off of unstructured data, according to Brendan Grady (pictured), executive vice president and general manager of the Analytics and AI Business Unit at Qlik.

QlikTech’s Brendan Grady talks about Qlik Answers with theCUBE.

“When you think of unstructured data, it’s Word documents, call center notes, PowerPoints, PDFs, all the things,” he said. “There’s a ton of information in there that if you mine it, you’re going to find some really interesting pieces of knowledge.”

Grady spoke with theCUBE Research’s John Furrier and Savannah Peterson at Qlik Connect, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed Qlik’s commitment to enabling a data-first AI adoption model and the integration of structured and unstructured data to enhance decision-making. (* Disclosure below.)

Qlik Answers and shifting perspective from data-driven to data-centric

It might be a common phrase in the industry, but the concept of being “data-driven” has driven Grady crazy for most of his career. He prefers companies to be “data-centric.”

“What this means for generative AI, you’ve got to put this data at the center of everything you do, and it is generating more,” Grady said. “From a product’s perspective, what I really see us evolving to is delivering on our vision of both structured and unstructured data.”

Combining structured and unstructured data helps people constantly make better decisions, according to Grady. That changes their approach.

“Make it one single way of thinking about it,” he said.

When it comes to Qlik Answers, there are a couple of use cases one can talk about when discussing how adoption is accelerated, according to Grady. One involves the average business user.

“They would literally go in, find their documents, say if it’s on a OneDrive, on a Google Drive, whatever it is, select the documents, import, index, done,” he said.

There are also more complex cases. That might involve unstructured data all over the place, according to Grady.

“It may require something like a Talend Cloud to go off and get it and manage it and make sure the quality’s there, and then move it and get it into a format that Answers can use,” he said. “There may be a case where it may get a little technical, but ultimately we want it to be really simple that anybody could use it. Even me.”

In the end, generative AI is going to be all about the democratization of data, according to Grady. It will make things more accessible to everyone.

“These digital natives, they’re not going to want some different experience at work,” he said. “They’re going to want that at the workplace. If we do it right, and more importantly when we do it, and you’ve already seen some of the things we’re doing, that will be the great equalizer. It’ll make it so that [business intelligence] and analytics and data discovery isn’t a thing. It’s part of everything.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of Qlik Connect:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Qlik Connect. Neither QlikTech International AB, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE