Google LLC is giving the Looker business intelligence platform it acquired early last year a major upgrade.

A new release announced today features a developer portal, support for Microsoft Corp.’s Azure hosting, an interactive means to explore application programming interfaces and incremental persistent derived tables. Google is intent on repositioning Looker as a development platform that goes beyond the traditional business intelligence reports and visualizations.

“The way we experience data in our personal lives has fundamentally been transformed but the tools we use for data at work haven’t,” said Pedro Arellano, director of Looker outbound product management. He cited the examples of auto navigation apps and workout trackers, which are essentially purpose-built business intelligence engines.

“We see Looker as the API for data, for everything companies want to do,” Arellano said. “We’re deepening our commitment to making Looker a way to build data experiences tailored to the way people work.”

Faster setup

A key new feature is Looker’s Extension Framework, a part of the new Looker Developer Portal that automates hosting, security and DevOps so developers can focus more directly on building software. The addition of Microsoft Azure support reaffirms Google’s commitment to support multiple clouds given that many companies store their data in more than one database across a variety of cloud and on-premises platforms, Arellano said. Incremental PDTs essentially apply fresh data to the results of an existing query, thus reducing the need to re-run the entire query.

The new version includes several tools aimed at making developers more productive. The API Explorer is an interactive way to investigate the Looker API, prototype requests, and execute API calls with copy-and-paste functionality. Developers can now bring the filters they declare on any dashboard in Looker into any embedded application or extension, a feature that decreases application maintenance overhead.

Google plans to provide a variety of prebuilt components for such functions as visualization, alerts, search and notifications. “Over the past year have seen a four-times increase in the use of embedded analytics by our customers,” Arellano said. “This is a reaction to what we’re seeing.”

The new Cloud Cost Management function provides reporting and business intelligence capabilities to help users optimize their costs across the three major clouds. Google is not getting into the cloud cost optimization market, where there are several established competitors. “We want to provide Looker customers with this functionality because they already have the infrastructure in place,” he said.

Finally, a new Looker mobile app provides reporting on multiple devices with support for 22 languages and biometric authentication. Looker now also integrates with Microsoft’s Teams collaboration environment, enabling data to be incorporated into any conversation in teams. “We understand that not everybody wants to be forced into a BI tool,” Arellano said.

Image: Google