Qlik more effectively delivers courses with Skytap

Before Skytap, Qlik used a different cloud-based offering. The provider’s pay-as-you-go pricing model was prohibitively expensive. “The previous provider charged by the day, so we’d plan ahead and schedule each team member’s time to log in and out to maximize usage,” said Rogers. “It wasn’t just expensive, but also inconvenient.”

Qlik’s fast-paced development requires the training team to quickly and regularly update content and templates. However, Qlik’s previous provider locked down their VMs by default and charged for updates. While Qlik had a small number of “free updates” allocated to them, it was not enough and forced them to bundle updates in a less efficient manner in order to manage costs. “We had to explicitly instruct them to open up ports and whitelist domains, which was a really frustrating bottleneck that didn’t keep pace with our innovation cycles and prevented us from moving as fast as we wanted to go,” said Rogers.

The Qlik team also had ongoing trouble with their previous provider’s support process for creating new classes. Their approach relied on email and sharing images to capture technical specifications in order to build the classroom images for Qlik rather than enabling Qlik to self-serve and create images on their own. “This approach simply didn’t work, and we were nearly forced to cancel two days into a four-day course because they couldn’t get the setup right,” said Rogers.

As the Qlik user base grew, the curriculum department needed to scale up to support the company’s overall sales, as well as to meet the department’s own revenue goals. “Training is a critical part of a customer’s success at Qlik, and key to our sales approach,” said Rogers. “Customers who are trained to get the most out of the product come back for more licenses.” Scaling up involves creating more content for more users, as well as implementing reliable infrastructure to deliver that content globally and on-demand. Previously, it would take the curriculum team a week or more to make a small change to a template, and incorrect templates were sometimes deployed in the classroom.

Both Qlik customers and trainers vary greatly in their technical abilities. “Our users range from non-technical people who say, ‘Just show me where to click,’ to extremely technical users who want to implement it as a full-on, cloud-based offering to test run setups and install their own operating systems,” said Rogers.

The price point for implementing Skytap and Course Manager was an instant hit. According to Rogers, the cost reduction of 65% was so fast and dramatic in comparison to the previous solution that the Qlik CFO asked the VP of Education Services in disbelief, “How did you do it?”

Rogers praised the speed of deployment. For example, it’s not unusual for a student to turn up at the last minute. With Qlik’s previous vendor, setting up a new environment took an hour or more, but with Course Manager, the new environment is ready in a matter of two minutes — a 97% decrease. “Now it takes longer to fire up those machines than it does to deploy them from the template to the environment. With Skytap, we just don’t have to worry about last-minute, ad-hoc scenarios at all.”

“One of the things I love most is the flexibility of administration,” said Rogers, adding that “the level of auditability, reportability, and oversight that I have on the entire setup and infrastructure is beyond my highest expectation.”

Course Manager’s web interface gives users at all levels complete control over everything—from creating templates and setting up environments to deploying a classroom of students and accessing the API—far beyond anything Qlik had seen with their previous provider.

Course Manager’s web interface gives users at all levels complete control over everything—from creating templates and setting up environments to deploying a classroom of students and accessing the API—far beyond anything Qlik had seen with their previous provider.

Delivering live and online instruction to a growing, global customer base is a daunting technical task. Course Manager masks the complexity with its remarkably easy-to-use and intuitive web interface, and rock-solid implementation.

Qlik’s exponential growth meant the curriculum team needed to get to mass scale while ensuring the training content kept up with product innovation. A flexible, agile solution became a requirement, and the curriculum team turned to Skytap. “You know it’s right when people stop saying how good it is, because it’s the norm for them now,” said Rogers. “You’re thinking, “What did we do before we had the ability to just flip out a whole load of environments at the drop of a hat!’”

“Everybody who is using Course Manager is now raving about it,” added Rogers, adding that trainers in other countries are eagerly using Course Manager to develop templates to deliver training in their local languages.