As from 18th July 2017 Qlik introduces a new Subscription Based License model for Qlik Sense. To better meet customer needs by offering flexible terms and volume-based pricing, Qlik is making subscription license versions of Qlik Sense® Enterprise and Qlik Sense® Enterprise Test and Development Sites available. It is important to know that this will be added to the Perpetual License model. This great news was already announced at the Qonnections ’17 in Orlando USA but it’s now official !
Perpetual Licenses are licenses with no expiration date. There is an initial cost to purchase a license, plus an annual Subscription cost that entitles the owner to all updates and technical support. Subscriptions can be thought of as “renting” a Software license year-to-year. You pay either a quarterly or annual price that includes software, all updates and technical support.
Subscription based pricing really fits in the trend of cloud based offerings which is a substantial grow market ($3.9 billion market of a $18 billion total). The entire software industry trend is that by 2020 more than 80 percent of software vendors will change their business model from traditional license and maintenance to subscription (Source: Gartner – Moving to a Software Subscription Model).
A subscription model is a stepping stone and a part of the journey to the cloud. Although the new model can also be applied to on-premise installations it really suits the cloud offerings. The real benefit for subscription can be found in lower barriers for entry because of less upfront investment and purchasing flexibility. Customers can start small and scale up over time and customers can now for example start with subscription and convert to a bigger perpetual deal later. Another trend is the so called hybrid cloud where customers mix their on-premise and cloud strategy. The new pricing model helps these customers in their journey to this hybrid cloud. To the business itself, subscription licensing offers some significant value, especially to finance departments. Through moving to subscription licensing companies are generally able to move from capital expenses (capex) to operational expenses (opex) which is generally seen as favorable. Last but not least the Qlik subscription model offers a way to beat the competition. Competitors like Microsoft PowerBI and Tableau are already offering these models. Qlik now not only has the better and more complete product offering but also a similar pricing offering. Exact pricing comparisons are always hard to make, in the end all vendors adapt to each other making the pricing differences not really big. The differences must be sought in the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and TTD (Time to Delivery) where stack vendors like Microsoft position their BI offering with the primary goal to sell other more profitable products. So with the one product PowerBI you don’t have an end solution but you need additional software and expertise to make your Business Intelligence project work. Same thing for Tableau.
The Qlik pricing model is volume based with tiers 1-25, 26-50, 51-100, 101-250, 251-500 and 501-1000. Pricing will vary from $33 dollar per user per month to $60 dollar based on the volume. In comparison with Tableau this model looks very competitive as they offer from $35 to $70 per user per month. The Microsoft PowerBI offering starts from $9,95 per user per month, this looks much cheaper but you have really big additional cost when you grow in volume. PowerBI has an additional capacity pricing model called Power BI Premium ($4.995 per month per node) where the TCO really hits you hard.
The new model of Qlik will be more permanent starting from 2018 meaning that pricing and configurations can be tweaked along the way. The contract term is a one year subscription term, which will be invoiced in advance. There will be a possibility for multiple year terms with special discounts. Enterprise support is included in subscriptions and will be delivered directly by Qlik for 2017. More detailed information on Qlik subscription pricing model can be retrieved by contacting the sales team at Victa (verkoop@victa.nl).