Embrace the Change: Advantages of Switching from Looker to QuickSight


AllCloud Blog:
Cloud Insights and Innovation

In today’s data-driven world, businesses rely heavily on powerful analytics tools to extract meaningful insights from their data. Two popular players in the market, Looker and QuickSight, offer advanced capabilities to help organizations make informed decisions. However, as technology evolves, it is crucial for businesses to harness the power of AI and advanced analytics for boosted efficiency and reduced operational costs.

In this blog post, we will explore the advantages of migrating from Looker to QuickSight and how this transition can benefit your organization by unleashing the power of your data to make a meaningful impact on your business’ top and bottom lines.

Payback Measured in Months

Let’s first address the elephant in the room.  Switching from one BI tool to another can be costly. However, with the right partner and with the right accelerators (hint, hint), one significant advantage of switching from Looker to QuickSight is the potential for a quick return on investment. In early tests, we have seen a 4X return on investment with conversion projects measured in weeks not months or quarters. 

QuickSight’s pay-as-you-go pricing model ensures that organizations only pay for the resources they utilize. This flexibility allows businesses to scale their analytics operations seamlessly without incurring unnecessary costs during periods of low demand. As data volumes fluctuate and business needs evolve, QuickSight adjusts the resources automatically, ensuring cost optimization and providing significant savings over time.

Seamless Integration with AWS and ISV Ecosystem

One of the primary advantages of QuickSight is its seamless and fits-like-a-glove integration within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) ecosystem. QuickSight is an AWS-native service that provides seamless connectivity with various data sources, such as Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, and more. This integration allows for faster data access and enables organizations to leverage the full potential of AWS’s cloud infrastructure in minutes.

Reduced Administrative and Infrastructure Costs

By migrating from Looker to QuickSight, organizations can eliminate the need for a dedicated infrastructure setup and continuous maintenance. With QuickSight’s cloud-native architecture, there’s no need to provision and manage servers or invest in hardware upgrades. This reduction in administrative and infrastructure costs translates into tangible savings for the business. Organizations can redirect resources that would have been allocated to infrastructure maintenance and administration towards strategic initiatives like business growth and revenue generation. QuickSight’s simplified setup and management enable businesses to focus on data analysis and deriving insights instead of experiencing delays with complex and time consuming administrative tasks from expensive and scarce technical resources.

Next-level Embedded Analytics

Businesses require actionable data at the point of decision-making. QuickSight takes embedded analytics to new heights with its comprehensive Embedded Analytics SDK that empowers businesses to seamlessly integrate QuickSight’s interactive dashboards and reports into their applications. With QuickSight’s embedded analytics feature, organizations are equipped to deliver a cohesive analytics experience to their users without the need for extensive coding efforts. The SDK provides robust APIs and developer tools, simplifying the process of embedding QuickSight’s analytics capabilities. The biggest advantage for businesses is that they only pay for what they use with a low per-session fee.

Did Someone Mention AI?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is both scary and exciting. QuickSight has several features that Looker does not. By leveraging the power of AWS’s decade+ experience with AI, Quicksight has leapfrogged over other competitors and is far more advanced than simple dashboards. In the next few quarters, these features will become a must-have for organizations looking to adapt and get ahead of the curve. 

QuickSight Q is a unique Natural Language Processing (NLP) feature that allows users to ask questions about their data using simple, conversational language. With QuickSight Q, you can type or speak questions directly into the QuickSight interface, and the system generates instant, accurate visualizations based on the queried data. This intuitive NLP interface empowers users to explore data effortlessly, uncover hidden patterns, and obtain insights without the need for complex query languages or coding skills.

QuickSight also offers built-in predictive analytics capabilities, ML Insights, allowing organizations to go beyond descriptive analytics and make informed predictions about future outcomes. Using pre-built machine learning models, users can generate forecasts and predictions, enabling proactive decision-making and scenario planning. QuickSight’s predictive analytics empowers businesses to anticipate market trends, optimize resources, and enhance overall business performance.

Those that harness its potential will be able to disrupt the market and extract a nice premium for doing so. And for those that aren’t…well, we would advise you to at least have a plan.

And for Those That Want Even More AI

 It can be tricky to integrate Looker with a business’ machine learning (ML) of predictive models.

QuickSight, on the other hand, integrates seamlessly with Amazon SageMaker, enabling organizations to harness the power of machine learning and advanced analytics for real-time predictions.  A predictive model is only as good as the ability to act quickly and at the point of making a decision. As routine tasks become increasingly automated, this feature can become a game changer for nearly every department in every industry.

Everyone wants to have lightning-fast analytics without sluggish development cycles. The integration between QuickSight and SageMaker creates a streamlined analytics workflow. Users can leverage SageMaker’s powerful machine learning capabilities to build and train models, and then incorporate those models into QuickSight for visualization and reporting. This integrated workflow eliminates the need to switch between multiple platforms, streamlining the iterative analytics process and saves valuable time and effort.

By leveraging QuickSight’s features, everyone can now uncover hidden patterns, identify trends, make accurate predictions, and generate forecasts. These enhanced analytical capabilities enable democratized access to make informed decisions, anticipate market trends, identify opportunities, mitigate risks, and drive business growth.

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Switching from Looker to QuickSight offers organizations a transformative shift in analytics capabilities. QuickSight is a scalable, cloud-native platform that is progressively becoming the go-to platform for those looking to turn their data into a strategic asset. With its unique features related to AI, NLP, and predictive model integration, businesses can now uncover hidden patterns, make accurate predictions, and drive business growth through data-driven decision-making.

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What’s next? AllCloud can provide a complimentary assessment of your Looker Dashboard and Reports. This assessment will utilize AllCloud’s QuickShift tool to provide a report of the convertibility to QuickSight. By leveraging our service, you may be able to save up to 75% on switching costs with a payback within months.

Contact our experts today! 

Dave Taddei

SVP of Global Data Analytics Strategy

Read more posts by Dave Taddei