Whether it’s an aggressive acquisition strategy or intriguing uses of its technology by big-name customers, QlikTech International AB generated a fair amount of buzz in Las Vegas this week.

In theCUBE’s just-concluded coverage of QlikWorld 2023, interviews with company executives and customers highlighted how the enterprise world may be very application-centric right now but business logic is going to become more embedded into the application. The landscape is shifting toward data apps.

“What they’re able to help companies do in terms of extracting value from data, moving it to where it needs to be, getting it into the right hands so that people across companies … can actually drive insight from that in real time, which is what we all expect these days, and take action,” said analyst Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during a post-show analysis. (* Disclosure below.)

Continued acquisitions

To drive its vision for extracting value from data, Qlik has been especially active in the acquisition market over the past few years. Two of the most notable purchases were data integration solutions provider Attunity Inc. in 2019 and data management firm Talend Inc. this year.

In theCUBE’s interview with Qlik chief executive Mike Capone, the company’s leader made it clear that the tech world can expect acquisition activity to continue.

“We’ve done 10 acquisitions over the last five years to really extend out and add capabilities like data integration and data quality, artificial intelligence, machine learning,” Capone said. “It’s all been customer informed. It’s a really great balance of internal research and development spend, as well as M&A, and you should expect that to continue.”

TheCUBE’s analysts noted this week that Qlik’s growth strategy through acquisition will likely have an impact on its plans for an initial public offering. The company announced plans for an IPO filing in 2022.

But the IPO has yet to happen, and Capone indicated this week that the filing remains on hold. Basic financial arithmetic is a likely cause, according to theCUBE’s industry analyst Dave Vellante.

“They got $6 billion all-in on the nine or 10 or 11 acquisitions … so they’ve got to get that out if they’re going to do an IPO,” Vellante said. “Their break-even on that is about 5x revenue, so they’ve got to get that higher. I would suspect these guys aren’t going public anytime soon.”

Real-time food sales

The interest surrounding Qlik is partly due to the firm’s ability to demonstrate how data analytics can help drive major business operations. Aramark Inc., the food service provider at sports venues around the world, has been leveraging Qlik’s technology to manage the complicated process of serving tens of thousands of fans during events.

What’s selling. What’s not selling? Is the weather hot or cold? Qlik’s data analytics engines help Aramark make high-volume food sales decisions on the fly.

“They are streaming information about what’s going on at that game,” Capone told theCUBE this week. “They have a big command center, and they see it all in real time.”

TheCUBE’s interview with executives from the British multinational restaurant chain PizzaExpress provided another twist to Qlik’s evolving role in enterprise IT. Pizza Express deployed the Qlik Cloud to put move advanced and interactive real-time analytics and data into the hands of its employees.

The customer relationship between the two firms is also a signal that Qlik is building a capacity to provide functionality across multiple cloud platforms.

“PizzaExpress is an Azure shop, so that was kind of interesting,” Vellante noted. “Whether or not it makes sense for them to be a supercloud, I actually think it does. Just doing deals with all three cloud vendors, adding Azure and GCP makes sense. There is a cost of that abstraction, but it gives customers great optionality and the ability to do best of breed across the different clouds.”

All-in on capacity pricing

Discussion this week with Qlik executives revealed that another key element of the company’s strategy involves an early venture into the world of capacity pricing. Qlik is introducing capacity-based pricing across its portfolio for SaaS, according to Josh Good, vice president of global product marketing at Qlik.

It will be based on a data capacity model, and pricing will be determined by the amount of data being moved and the amount of data being analyzed.

“Qlik is jumping into capacity pricing, starting with data integration and analytics later this year,” Martin said. “They are very much listening to their customers. I kind of made a joke about dipping a toe in the water. He said, ‘Oh no, no. We’re in.’”

Qlik’s growing enterprise influence points toward the evolution of the central role that data now plays inside the application. The company’s solutions are geared toward flipping the script, where it’s data that leads the way, not the app.

“Business logic and the metadata are going to reside on top of the data, not the other way around, so data becomes first,” Vellante said. “That’s what data first means to me, and that’s a brave new world. I have no doubt that a company like this, who’s so good at M&A, is going to get there.”

(* Disclosure: This is an unsponsored editorial segment. However, theCUBE is a paid media partner for the QlikWorld event. Neither QlikTech International AB nor sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: Qlik