With the emerging trend of software sitting on the cloud and the associated new concept of selling software as a service (SaaS), Qlik did not miss the trend and has extended its platform by offering Qlik Sense on the cloud. Especially attractive for personal use and small businesses, Qlik Sense for business use can be available to you for as little as $15/month/user (as per 10th March 2018).

While much cheaper than buying Qlik Sense tokens, Qlik Cloud comes with some technical limitations, which this chapter will discuss. It will give you an overview of the product offerings with a list of features in comparison, including a description of how the cloud model works, its benefits, and to what extent it's different from both the Qlik Sense Desktop Client and the Server edition. It's important to note, however, that Qlik Sense's Cloud offering is still in its infancy and continuously being improved. Practical application is not yet common (at least on an enterprise level), however, with reading this chapter you will become aware of its opportunities and be able to make an educated decision whether a cloud-based solution is a suitable option for your own data analytics endeavors.

The chapter will conclude with some example use cases and scenarios where it would be beneficial for an individual or a company to use QS in the cloud or hybrid Sense environments, rather than hosting everything on-premise. 

These are the topics that we will be covering in this chapter:

• Data analytics in the cloud
• Qlik Sense cloud models
• Hybrid cloud