The Harman Kardon home and car audio brand is only one of many under the Harman International Industries Inc. umbrella.

Another is Harman Digital Transformation Solutions, which recently announced its partnership with QlikTech International AB to help customers of both companies streamline, modernize and simplify enterprise operations through co-engineered integrated data and analytics solutions.

“Harman DTS is our services and consulting division,” said Jai Ganesh (pictured, right), chief product officer of Harman International. “A lot of the work we do for our customers is in the area of data analytics, AI, machine learning and cloud computing. What we’ve learned from our deep expertise in Qlik is what we are bringing to our customers through this Qlik partnership.”

Ganesh; Annette Jonker (middle), head of data analytics at Harman International; and Molly Burns (left), vice president of sales and North America partners at Qlik, spoke with theCUBE industry analyst Dave Vellante at the QlikWorld event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They unpacked the partnership and discussed how both companies are approaching it. (* Disclosure below.)

Tapping into data-focused tech

Most of Harman DTS’ customers are large data shops. Oftentimes, that data isn’t well integrated with the intended workflow, according to Ganesh. So, the company hopes to leverage Qlik and tap into new, data-focused tech, such as artificial intelligence.

“It’s all about pushing the boundaries using some of the great technology which Qlik brings to the table and combining that with a lot of AI/ML, particularly some of the emerging trends around generative AI, to build solutions to help customers make better sense of the data,” Ganesh explained.

Any data discussion must touch on strategy and implementation. Thus, Harman DTS’ approach is reliant on the data mesh to accelerate speed to insights, according to Jonker.

“With Qlik, we are actually at an interesting place where you can build an application and then retrofit it to wherever the data source is or should be,” she explained. “We are not blocking our speed to insight by saying, ‘Hey, everything has to be within the data lake.’ For us, data mesh seems to be the most applicable.”

Since Qlik looks for depth in its ecosystem partners, teaming up with Harman DTS made sense, as the company is known for its innovation, according to Burns.

“They’re also able to assess, arm and enable customers throughout the journey, whether it be with system dependencies, security concerns and new ideas on how that may be applicable within and outside of Qlik — or in the generative AI space that we’re talking about today,” she said. “So, for us, it’s very important to have strategic partners that can have bigger conversations and also be a trusted voice to the customers and to the community.”

In practice, Harman DTS has set up an enablement program to help users understand the new platform so that they can handle all the requirements to create applications from top to bottom, according to Jonker.

“We have an enablement program that walks people through from how to use Qlik to how to extend Qlik,” she said. “Being able to add charts and publish them out into the central hub or really create their applications from start to finish … is where we feel the biggest value is.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the QlikWorld event:

(* Disclosure: QlikTech International AB sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Qlik nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE