Introducing Connector Factory - Delivering Universal Connectivity for Every Enterprise Application and Data Source

It’s no secret that enterprises are pushing their data and analytics teams to deliver on the promise of real-time decision-making to navigate an increasingly complex and changing marketplace.

The rapid adoption of the cloud is helping data and analytics professionals to get closer to this vision. However, as more and more SaaS applications and databases come online, the complexity and access issues these professionals wrestled with on-premises has exploded in the cloud.

Consider this:

• There are almost 400 databases and thousands of packaged and legacy applications, all with ever changing APIs

• Data engineering teams are being bombarded by custom one-off integration requests that accumulate technical debt

• Analytics teams have a growing number of sources to pull from but are hampered by broken connections and delays in getting to data.

Leading analyst firms like IDC are seeing how this all adds up to increasing challenges for organizations, with this statistic from their recent survey. - Source: IDC Data Management Survey, 2023.

We know all too well the challenges enterprises face with data movement, transformation, and access. That’s why Qlik has continually expanded our connectivity, and today Qlik already supports over 250 different data sources and targets in both our data integration and analytics solutions.

With the introduction of Connector Factory, we’re making a significant commitment to delivering the connectivity that enterprises need today and well into the future.

Connector Factory is both an internal team dedicated to rapidly responding to customer connectivity requirements, and a new technology used by this team to help with expedited delivery. The Connector Factory team utilizes a unique technology to rapidly connect to sources through their standard API, automatically map data and relationships, identify custom fields, and provide incremental loading to cloud data warehouses and other targets supported by Qlik Cloud Data Integration. This approach enables the team to rapidly respond to new customer requests for emerging or custom sources.

The first priority for the Connector Factory is to deliver over 100 new connectors in 2023 for our new Qlik Cloud Data Integration solution. The initial delivery expected over the next few quarters includes support for 30 of the most popular enterprise applications including NetSuite, Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, Salesforce, Epic, Cerner, OSIsoft, ADP, SAP Ariba and HubSpot. Additional data integration connectors will be released monthly.

Connector Factory is a natural extension of our promise and value to customers and supports what they have come to enjoy and expect from Qlik.

• We are open and agnostic to any source or target – and Connector Factory will accelerate our delivery and provide greater agility to customers

• Connector Factory will help unlock more data, which yields better insights and outcomes for our customers in Qlik Cloud or their cloud of choice

• And Connector Factory will make us more efficient in the delivery and management of connectors today and long into the future.

IDC sees bulk data movement as the largest submarket and highest growth, and together with dynamic data movement (aka Change Data Capture) it is a huge part of the demand in overall Data Integration. With Connector Factory, customers can even more confidently rely on us to drive value across the entire data movement lifecycle.

Qlik’s connectors are part of Qlik Cloud, so customers can take advantage of them in every region across the globe immediately when they are released. Qlik will continue to deliver Qlik Cloud Data Integration connectors through Connector Factory over the course of the year, keeping pace with new sources towards the goal of creating universal connectivity for enterprises.

As cloud sources and SaaS applications grow, Qlik's Connector Factory will provide the universal connectivity enterprises need to drive their data strategies.