- On Wednesday, the business intelligence software company Looker launched Looker 7, a new version of its analytics software that will include interactive dashboards, integrations with Slack and other popular tools, and additional
enterprise capabilities. - Google Cloud announced it would acquire Looker for $2.6 billion in June, though the deal has not yet closed.
- Notably, Looker 7 will include additional capabilities to host on multiple clouds like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud - and this is also one of Google Cloud's main focuses.
- Read more on the Business Insider homepage.
In June, Google Cloud announced it will acquire Looker for $2.6 billion, and while the deal hasn't closed yet, the business intelligence company just launched a new product that plays into one of Google Cloud's key strategies.
Looker provides business intelligence (BI) and analytics software. For example, people might use Looker to analyze how they spend money on online advertising and how many people click on these ads, or a shipping company might use it to manage its truck fleets. On Wednesday, Looker announced a new version of its product called Looker 7.
"With Looker 7, we're trying to really change how the industry has approached business intelligence," Nick Caldwell, Looker's chief product officer, told Business Insider. "We want to move from traditional BI."
Looker 7 will have faster, interactive dashboards and integrations with Slack, Google Drive, Box, and more. It will also include more tools for developers so they can easily customize Looker for their use, additional analytics features to help users see what's going on in their business, and a marketplace to find templates, plug-ins, and more.
Finally, it will have more capabilities to host, manage, and secure software on multiple clouds, including Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure.
"Modern enterprises expect multicloud," Caldwell said. "This is a huge area of investment for us. Many of our customers are on AWS and GCP and Azure or they may have a mix of on-premise as well. With Looker we're trying to make sure we maintain flexibility and choice of cloud."
This is also a core strategy of Google Cloud, which in April launched Anthos, a product that allows users to run Google Cloud services not only on Google Cloud, but also on private data centers and even rival clouds like AWS and Azure.
This strategy is important, Caldwell says, because it gives customers more choice.
"All of these clouds have different strengths and weaknesses," Caldwell said. "If you're a customer, you don't want to give up choice. Our positioning is we're not going to try to take that choice away from people. We're going to embrace it and assume upfront that they're going to have services across multiple clouds."
Google's acquisition of Looker, which has yet to close, would be the largest acquisition since Thomas Kurian took the reins as Google Cloud's CEO. Caldwell says Looker fits into Google Cloud's overall strategy by providing analytics software for Google's data services.
"If you're here to list out all their services, there's a huge gap on business intelligence analytics," Caldwell said. "We fit right in there."
In addition, Caldwell says he's excited about Google's artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.
"We'll be able to take advantage of these cool new technologies to accelerate on our road map," he said.