Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

Our customers’ worlds are complex, and for good reason. It’s multi-cloud. It’s SaaS plus on-prem. It’s Snowflake, Databricks, AWS, Azure, Salesforce, and more. Underneath every one of those choices is the same constraint: data must be accessible, stay current, and stay controlled. The hard part is getting trusted data where it needs to be, when it needs to be there, with the controls to use it responsibly.

January 28th marks International Data Privacy Day, a day to raise awareness about the importance of privacy and promote best practices. Privacy has long been about maintaining control of your data, in particular where it goes, and who can see it, and what it’s used for. Two topics under this theme, data residency and data sovereignty, come up in almost every customer conversation at the moment. While closely aligned, there are key differences.

If you have ever asked three teams for the definition of the “same” metric and gotten three different answers, you have already met one of the most expensive, least talked about problems in modern data. It is not a lack of data. It is a lack of shared meaning. As analytics and AI spread across more tools, clouds, and teams, business context often fails to travel with the data. A metric defined one way in a dashboard gets redefined in a notebook.

Over the past two years, generative AI has transformed how we create, learn, and interact. But a more profound shift is already underway—one that changes not just how we work but who (or what) does the work itself. We are entering the era of agentic AI, where systems don’t merely answer questions—they reason, decide, and act on our behalf.

Somehow, another year has passed and we’re back again to deliver our Trends Outlook for 2026. As Qlik’s first milestone of the year, it’s a busy but exciting time that hugely energizes me after the holiday break. We weren’t short of inspiration. The world has given us a far from a blank canvas on which to illustrate our Trends and in particular, conversations around AI have firmly evolved from future-gazing to wrestling with the formula for harnessing its power.

Human Resources is rich in data but often struggles to make it accessible and actionable. As a profession we also live in the ‘grey’ – of course recognizing that People are by very definition different, unique and often require individual approach.

When recognition comes directly from customers, it feels different. I am very proud that Qlik has been named a Customers’ Choice in the 2025 Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms. This is the second year in a row that Qlik has received this distinction. It is based entirely on feedback and reviews from verified users of Qlik solutions around the world.

Gartner has once again named Qlik a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools, a position we have held for a decade. In that time, the landscape around data integration has shifted. Hyperscalers are moving up, large vendors are tightening their stacks, and acquisitions are reshaping customer choice. For CIOs and CDOs, that consolidation changes the question. It is less about who sits where in the quadrant, and more about how much control you still have over your own data and AI strategy.

When I talk to customers about privacy and their data, the topic is data sovereignty. More and more organisations want their data to stay in a specific jurisdiction, with no transfer to, or access from, another region. A few years ago, this was something for lawyers and compliance teams to worry about. Now it is a regular item on the C-suite agenda because it touches cloud strategy, innovation projects, and how you run the business day to day.

As the lead sustainability officer at Qlik, I've had the privilege of witnessing firsthand the collaborative spirit and escalating urgency driving climate action today. Events like Climate Week NYC, the C40 World Mayors Summit, and COP30, highlight a clear reality: commitments are essential, but implementation and accountability matter more — within private and public sectors alike. And at the heart of this transition lies a powerful trio: data, collaboration, and AI.