Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

In the first part of this series, I argued that discernment, the ability to recognise when an AI-generated answer is wrong, is becoming one of the most valuable capabilities inside an organisation. The question this piece addresses is simpler and harder: who is actually being given the opportunity to develop it? The AI opportunity gap is real. It is not primarily a gap in access to tools. It is a gap in permission. And I believe that gap starts earlier than most leaders realise, often in school.

One thing has become increasingly clear to me: the businesses that thrive in the AI era won't be the ones with the most data, they'll be the ones where every employee knows how to use it. The World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs Report names analytical thinking as the top core skill companies need today, and a 2024 Gartner survey found poor data literacy to be one of the top five obstacles to analytics success.

Looking back on 2025, one idea anchors everything we set out to accomplish: make data accessible and trusted so organizations can generate better decisions for their business, their customers, and the world.

For more than a decade, I have argued that the most valuable skill in a data-driven organisation is not access to information. It is the judgment to know when that information is wrong. AI has made that skill more important, not less. When I wrote about AI literacy in 2023, the pushback I heard most often was that the technology was not yet good enough for the question to matter. Now it is. AI can generate answers, summaries, recommendations, code, analysis, and increasingly, actions.

The future of data analytics and AI education has just become even more accessible. The Qlik Academic Program is excited to announce a major upgrade to Qlik Product licenses available for educators and students worldwide. Participants in the program will now receive access to Premium Qlik Cloud Analytics and Premium Qlik Talend Cloud, providing an even more powerful environment for teaching, learning, and innovating with data.

We are excited to share that Qlik has been recognized as a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics & Business Intelligence Platforms, recognized for both our Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. Download the complimentary report here. Sixteen years. Our Sweet Sixteen, if you're counting. I'd argue it's less a milestone for us and more a proof point.

One line from Snowflake Summit 2026 stood out above everything else. Christian Kleinerman, EVP of Product at Snowflake: "We do not want any of you spending money with Snowflake, in any use case, if you are not getting more value in return." It's a refreshing commitment, and it points directly at the cost efficiency conversation we've been having with customers around open lakehouse architectures. Here's the core argument: data movement doesn't directly generate value.

There's a pattern we see repeatedly in enterprise AI projects. A team identifies a compelling use case. They build the model. They staff the project. Then they spend the next six to eighteen months trying to solve a problem that was never on the roadmap: their data isn't ready. Not because it doesn't exist. It exists everywhere: in cloud warehouses, on-premises databases, SaaS platforms, and data lakes across multiple regions.

There’s a moment in every data team’s journey when a bill arrives with unexpected costs. It might be an egress charge you didn’t see coming, a query cost that spiralled when usage spiked, or the quiet realization that migrating your data to a different platform would take months of work and a significant budget. If you’ve been there, you know what vendor lock-in really costs, and it’s not just dollars.

At Qlik Connect, one question kept coming up in conversations with leaders: “Which AI vendor should we pick?” But I think that’s the wrong starting point. The better question is: What kind of company do you want to become over the next three years? Right now, most organizations are heading down one of two paths with AI. Some are bolting it onto existing workflows to improve efficiency.