Qlik Connect 2026 | Brian Hamel, Qlik

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Brian Hamel

Chief Revenue Officer

Qlik

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Brian Hamel, Qlik

Brian Hamel

Chief Revenue Officer Qlik

In this interview from Qlik Connect 2026, Brian Hamel, chief revenue officer of Qlik, joins Sunil Varanasy, data and AI head for manufacturing, logistics, energy and utilities at Cognizant, to talk with theCUBE Research's Rebecca Knight about how trusted data and ecosystem collaboration are enabling enterprises to move from AI experimentation to operational outcomes. Hamel explains that the starting point for AI is universal: a solid data foundation built on governance, quality and trusted context. Varanasy, who has worked with Qlik for 15 years, underscores ... Read more

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What is the starting point for AI for most organizations, and how much does that starting point vary? add

What are the most common gaps organizations face between their ambitions for AI and data and their actual execution? add

What are the primary obstacles organizations face when adopting AI, and how has Qlik recently changed its platform and market positioning to address those challenges? add

What does it take to turn a one-off pilot or success into a repeatable, scalable program, and what best practices should organizations follow to achieve that? add

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Brian Hamel, Qlik

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Rebecca Knight

>> Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Qlik Connect here in Orlando, Florida at the Gaylord Palms. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. Rob Strechay is off doing a roving reporter segment for this session. So he is off. I would like to welcome our next two guests to the show. We have Sunil Varanasy. He is the data and AI head for manufacturing logistics, energy, and utilities at Cognizant, a very long title.

>> Yep.

Rebecca Knight

>> Welcome.

>> Thank you, Rebecca.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yes.

>> Thank you for having me.

Rebecca Knight

>> And we have Brian Hamel, the Chief Revenue Officer here at Qlik. Thank you so much for coming on.

Brian Hamel

>> Thanks, Rebecca.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah. So, Brian, you are new here. You are new to Qlik. You've been in the role about 10 months. Why don't you start by telling our viewers a little bit about what attracted you to this company and why now?

Brian Hamel

>> Yeah, sure. First, thanks for being here. I think it's an exciting period. You can see it here in the background. But for me, two things. First, the market. I think as I look at the marketplace and particularly this AI explosion that we're experiencing right now, the foundation of all of that is data. So Qlik finds itself right in the middle of all of that. So when I think about the market and where I see growth and opportunity to bring value to clients, Qlik is very uniquely positioned. So I was very excited about that. But then second, Qlik's a 33-year-old company that's transformed itself multiple times over. And the innovation that you see here at Qlik, and hopefully, you see it in the keynote presentations and here on the show floor, Qlik is that foundation that will allow AI to expand and grow over time. So really excited to be here.

Rebecca Knight

>> Big picture, what is the starting point for AI for most of the organizations, most of the customers that you are working with right now? And how varied is that starting point?

Brian Hamel

>> Yeah. I don't think it's varied at all. I think it's with a solid data foundation, right? So when you think about your data, how well that data can be trusted, right? The context of that data. And so for us at Qlik, that's what we do with our customers, right? We curate that data. We help them from a overall compliance perspective and governance perspective. So for me, it's all about the data, and most large enterprises have spent many, many years positioning their data. And now, we have the opportunity to help them transition that and get the most out of AI moving forward.

Rebecca Knight

>> Sunil-

Brian Hamel

>> I can-

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah....

>> add to that.

Rebecca Knight

>> Please do.

>> I've been working on Qlik for 15 years now and I've seen the evolution from a visualization narratives to insights and decisions. And now today, what I saw truly excited me, going back to the data platform, bringing in agentic onto the data management platforms. I think Qlik has come a long way and then the future is bright.

Rebecca Knight

>> So talk a little bit about how you work side by side in partnership with Qlik.

Brian Hamel

>> Hey, before you do that, just we should acknowledge and congratulate Sunil and the Cognizant team. They won our Global System Integrator Innovation Partner of the Year Award this year. So they are a great example of working with Qlik to bring the very best value to our customers. So congratulations with that.

Rebecca Knight

>> Thank you very-

Rebecca Knight

>> Congratulations.

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah.

>> And we just now launched a data product as a service in collaboration with Qlik for asset and predictive maintenance. It's a very common prevalent problem in the industry that's not been resolved. When we did a survey last year, about 80% of the clients have not still solved the problem. So we are going to going after that market.

Rebecca Knight

>> What are some of the most common gaps that you see when you're working with organizations in terms of their ambition and what they want to do with AI and their data and their actual execution of that?

>> I think we've been talking all this morning. It's fundamentally data, understanding... We're all trying to solve the AI problem, but we are not trying to understand, "Hey, is my data good? Is the quality of the data good? Can I trust this data?" If I go back in any client media and ask them, "Hey, you have system data sets. Do you have a proper stewardship established? Do you know who the data product owners are?" 50% of the room is silent. So that's the problem that we are trying to solve. AI to me is icing on the cake.

Brian Hamel

>> I do want to loop back though to something that Sunil said earlier because we were talking about 33 years in the market. But you just look at the last six months, nine months, since I've been here, 10 months, Qlik has changed dramatically. Today, you heard about discovery agents-

>> Yes....

Brian Hamel

>> automation agents. So that's all just... We're talking the last three to six months. So what customers have known Qlik to be over the last 33 and where we are today from a foundation, from a positioning perspective in the market, really, really exciting.

Rebecca Knight

>> Qlik talks a lot about meeting customers where they are. Brian, how do you think about tailoring your advice and your guidance for a customer that is scaling versus one that is really just maybe emerging out of pilot stage?

Brian Hamel

>> Yeah. Well, first of all, Rebecca, what's clear is, every customer's at a different stage, right? It reminds me of Cloud 15, 20 years ago. When you think about the cloud journey, now we're in an AI journey. Every client's at a different position in their journey. So we have to adapt to that, right? And with partners like Cognizant, you can look at where they bring value for us is in that client engagement at a project level, bringing real outcomes with AI. And so whether it's a really small startup project pilot or a really large enterprise one where the customer's already vetted the data and they're ready to go, partners like Cognizant really help position us for growth in the future.

Brian Hamel

>> Yes.

Rebecca Knight

>> Sunil, describe a little bit about what the working relationship looks like day to day.

>> What is a working relationship with?

Rebecca Knight

>> With Qlik-

>> ....

Rebecca Knight

>> as a partner in terms of how you interact with customers, what you're doing for them, and helping them think through their approach.

>> So there are a couple of things that we do in a go to market strategy, right? We look at what is a potential market in terms of what is an untapped market for solutions. How can we jointly collaborate in building a solution and go after it? So building out the right solutions, the capabilities to the client, and then building it out there.

Rebecca Knight

>> So what does it take to move from something that has been a one-off success into something that is repeatable in the business and then scalable, ultimately? What are some best practices that have emerged in terms of how you help organizations think through that challenge?

>> Good question. I think we are evolving from SDLC. We are evolving to ADLC wherein if you look at it one year back, for us to build a program or a project, it takes one year. And after one year, people realize, "Hey, this is not exactly what I want." Now we are looking at fail fast. So if you look at the life cycle, we've just rolled out an AI CoE for a manufacturing client for us, we are talking about a prototype in a week's time, scaling it out to a small set of power users in four weeks time, and production ready in another four to six weeks time. So look at the timeline. So you understand, you adapt, you learn, and you improve.

Brian Hamel

>> Yeah. I would just add, I think it all links back to the value, right? So as we engage with clients and we work on projects and we establish value to the client, that outcome, the strength of those outcomes is what creates the repeatability you're talking about, the scale, right? So the more success we have driving outcomes for clients, the more likely we'll find repeatable, scalable solutions for many other clients as well.

Rebecca Knight

>> Can you describe an engagement that you had where you were able to, as you say, drive that value and show, "Hey, we can do this again and we can do it at scale"?

Brian Hamel

>> So I think, again, it goes back to fundamentally understanding the customer, the user personas. You do a customer journey mapping, understand where they're coming from, right? And then start building out the KPIs that are truly meaningful for them that once you it out to one set of customers. So today, we launched data product as a service and then predictive maintenance. If we are able to truly hone in on one customer, roll out the KPI, go back and validate it with them that, "Hey, does this make sense to you?" Then it is ready for truly market launch.

Rebecca Knight

>> Okay. Right. So, Brian, there's some focus on reducing reliance on external consultants. What needs to be in place internally for companies to be able to really own the work on their own?

Brian Hamel

>> Well, I don't know that I see that in the marketplace. You mentioned earlier, and I would say if you look at this year, one of our themes to the year is Qlik together, right? So you look at, "How do we work better together-"

Rebecca Knight

>> Yep.

Brian Hamel

>> "... with all of our partners, with all of our customers to create value?" And so when I think about that, it doesn't matter whether it is a global systems integrator or one of our solution partners or even one of our global distributors, right? Our tech alliance partners. It's, "How do we come together in that ecosystem to bring the absolute best value to our clients?" As it relates to consultants, I would argue that every customer's going to need to supplement their skills over time to make these pivots and these transformations. And I think that's a normal practice that we've seen year over year over year, right?

Rebecca Knight

>> And I think that's a difference-

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah....

>> that we saw in the last couple of years back, right? Two years back, a customer would talk to a Qlick, they would talk to a Cognizant, and they would talk to a cloud platform data partner, right? Same problem statement, three different times, and three different solutions that come together. Two years fast-forward, now, we are coming together, collaborating and building a common solution for the client. And that's the change that we are talking about.

Rebecca Knight

>> The emphasis on partnerships here at Qlik Connect is so enormous. You really feel that this is a real ecosystem where people are, as you say, collaborating rather than jostling to be-

>> Yep....

Rebecca Knight

>> the solution. How unusual is that? I mean, you're both technology veterans. I mean, how different are things today or is it just the ecosystem within the cultures of your company?

Brian Hamel

>> Let me grab that first. I like what you just said at the end there, within the ecosystem, right? Within technology, we've seen it over and over again, certain companies create these ecosystems that other companies feed off of. You could argue today, we can look at the big hyperscalers, right? You can look at the snowflakes, the Databricks. But even Qlick, we have over 35 customers around the world using our products. Everything you're looking around you is our ecosystem that is building value around that. So I love that thought that you think about these emerging ecosystems. And for us, it's about data and then moving data into analytics and then helping our customers capture the AI capabilities within that.

Rebecca Knight

>> I think the conversations have moved from reactive to a more proactive, this thing, right? Two years back or three years back, we would come together, "Hey, the customer has this problem statement. How do we go about solving it?" Now, we know what the problem is. We come together, we solve the problem, and we go to the customer, "Hey..." It is more a validation than, "Tell me your problem."

Rebecca Knight

>> And that's because you also have been working together for so long-

>> Yeah....

Rebecca Knight

>> too that you have a similar approach too.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah. I mean, with Qlik and most of our other partners, we have a proactive conversation every couple of weeks. It's a biweekly cadence. It's a discipline that we imbibed on.

Rebecca Knight

>> I want to talk now about jobs because AI and jobs is a hot topic in many corners of media, but I'm interested from your perspective in terms of skills-based training, roles-based training, and what it takes to really make AI stick in an organization and what you're seeing, Sunil, at Cognizant and also what you're seeing here at Qlik. But what are the real changes of foot in terms of the skills that are necessary?

Rebecca Knight

>> I see AI augmenting humans and not replacing humans. Cognizant is about 350,000 people. Last year, we ran a vibe coding event with about, I think, 250, 275K people. We are re-skilling our entire team. And what that means, in the past, you had a business analyst, you had a coder, you had a tester, you had a designer. All of that has changed now. You have a value engineer today who's looking at a use case, determining the ROI of the use case. You have an agent product manager who's looking at the feature capability that agents need to have. You have context engineers, you have vibe coders, you have a AI compliance lead. So the roles are different. So a lot of re-skilling is happening. You still need a lot of people to deliver on them.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah.

Brian Hamel

>> And maybe I'll speak a little bit from a sales perspective, but I would say broadly at Qlick, we're looking at embracing AI technology internally wherever we can gain efficiency and value, right? So I don't think it's so much about jobs as it is making the jobs we have far more productive so that we can execute much faster. When I think inside of sales, it's, "How do we identify new opportunity and how do we bring AI to that?" You could look at it in terms of, "How do we enable our people faster and better in terms of understanding customers requirements and mapping those requirements to our capabilities to then propose, 'How does AI speed that cycle?'" So I don't look at it so much as, "Is AI going to replace jobs that we have?" I think it's going to make the people we have so much better at doing the jobs that we're asking them to do.

Rebecca Knight

>> And give them the time and the space to think creatively about them rather than do-

Brian Hamel

>> Time's the most valuable asset, right?

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah.

Brian Hamel

>> So how do you get more time out of the resources you have?

Rebecca Knight

>> Right. Brian, you're having so many conversations, and I'm imagining, with partners, but especially customers. What are you hearing from them in terms of realizations that they're having or insights that they're coming away with from the show?

Brian Hamel

>> Yeah, it's moving so fast right now. As I just said, even here at Qlik, if I just measure my time here over the last 10 months, you could look at it in about 90-day increments and just the amount of change, both internally and externally, and all of our customers and partners are in the same boat. We're all trying to evaluate the rate and pace that we can integrate into our processes and our environments, the technology, the AI, to gain that outcome. At the end of the day, it's all about the outcomes. That's why Qlik is very uniquely positioned. Customer's going to want trusted data where they can trust the outcome and then scale that outcome, right? And that's where we think we're well positioned.

>> I think customers are not looking at every use case and then, "How do I go implement it?" I think that's a value engineering team that's coming in. They're looking at a use case and then identifying, "Hey, what is the complexity of scaling this out? What is the time taken? What is the ROI of doing it?" Only after the ROI is there and they prioritize it, that goes for implementation. So it's a very different ecosystem and a way of thinking in terms of how they want to implement it.

Rebecca Knight

>> And the peer-to-peer learning too that they're learning from each other in terms of, "What could I take from that and apply it to my organization too?"

Brian Hamel

>> Yep.

Rebecca Knight

>> Exactly.

>> As we are rolling out use cases, we are also looking at capabilities that are reusable components that can be leveraged for the broader organization.

Rebecca Knight

>> . Well, Sunil, Brian, thank you both so much for coming on the show. Really interesting conversation.

Brian Hamel

>> Thanks for having us.

Brian Hamel

>> Thank you so much.

Brian Hamel

>> Yep.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of Qlik Connect 2026. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.