Looker Announces Looker 7: Accelerating Insights to Action by Infusing Data Experiences Into Workflows

Today at JOIN 2019, Looker's annual three-day conference for data professionals, the company announced Looker 7, its next-generation, enterprise-grade data platform. Looker 7 transcends traditional business intelligence (BI) by infusing customizable data experiences into day-to-day tools and workflows to further close the gap between discovering insights and taking action.

"Companies are expanding how they use data by no longer thinking of it solely as something that is analyzed and then displayed on a dashboard, but by making its use operational across a myriad of job functions, from revenue optimization to product development," said Frank Bien, CEO of Looker. "This shift in thinking is resulting in companies choosing solutions that support a variety of ways to harness data - data experiences - to fuel everyday business processes. BI doesn't just let us know what happened yesterday, but becomes how we work today."

Looker 7

Looker 7 delivers new enhancements in three key areas: a new development framework for building powerful data experiences within and outside of Looker; reimagined BI experiences out-of-the-box that improve collaboration and data flow across common business tools; and enterprise-class security, hosting and management features to support the most demanding workloads.

Build and Deploy Data Experiences in Powerful New Ways

• A development framework that lets developers customize data experiences within Looker, and embed those experiences anywhere. Developers can use pre-built components that ensure these custom data experiences fit naturally in Looker. This combination unlocks powerful new ways to extend the Looker platform.
• To quickly find and deploy add-ons, Looker 7 includes an in-product Marketplace, which contains an ever growing collection of applications, integrations, plug-ins, templates, data sources and custom visualizations built by the Looker developer ecosystem.
• To help developers build these custom data experiences faster, Looker 7 includes a suite of developer tools that make it even easier to build with Looker. These new developer tools include:
  • New SDKs to make Looker's core APIs more approachable to developers in the languages they prefer. These include Typescript / Javascript, R, Python, Kotlin, and Swift along with an SDK Codegen to generate SDKs in additional languages.
  • A Developer Portal to provide developers with a centralized location for all the best Looker development tools and documentation. These resources serve a wide spectrum of developer needs to support a greater diversity of skill-levels, timelines and projects.

"A lot of our work centers around building custom data experiences which the new extension framework enables us to do incredibly fast - we built an application in less than two weeks!" said Nick Fogler, CEO and founder of 4Mile Analytics. "The launch of Marketplace is also a really important business opportunity for partners like us because we get to distribute our solutions to all of Looker's customers. Overall, the revamped developer experience coming out of Looker 7 demonstrates Looker's deep commitment to ensuring the success of its partners."

Reimagined BI Experience Out of the Box

• Looker 7 is reimagining dashboards by introducing enhanced UIs for greater self-service and interactivity. Looker customers can now create and share content in more intuitive ways including configurable filtering options such as cross-filtering, custom range finders and more. By delivering data in these new dashboard templates, Looker has created a dynamic reporting environment and mobile-first experience.
• Make better data-driven decisions within real-time Slack conversations with the new closed-loop Slack integration. It delivers data insights from Looker directly into Slack conversations and projects, including automatic alerts and instant sharing.
• Send trusted data when it's needed to where it's needed with new third party integrations for Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Auger.ai, mParticle, Matik and Spiff.com.
• Customers can use the new analytical alert feature to be automatically notified of important changes in their data via Slack, email, text or wherever they choose.
• Looker 7 has new SQL runner visualizations for data analysts wanting to understand raw data on-the-fly that allow raw SQL queries to be quickly displayed in charts and graphs.

"Looker's new alert feature enables RPM to communicate operational KPI's to our management team in real-time," said Andrew Farage, Co-Founder and COO of RPM, a national hospitality and entertainment brand focused on high-speed go karting. "We manage hundreds of high-performance go karts, running millions of races per year. Real-time alerts trigger variance data to our mechanics and operational leads, ensuring that each kart in our fleet is cycled equally. In our large-format hospitality environment, some of our most valuable data is invisible. Looker alerts serve up key operational insights that would otherwise go unnoticed."

Built for Enterprise-Grade Workloads

• For organizations who rely on data and analytics to power their business, Looker 7 provides a robust, secure, enterprise-class platform with expanded options for multi-cloud hosting, managing and seamlessly connecting to data, including:
  • To go from data to insights even faster, Looker 7 brings a new connections feature that connects 45+ data sources to the raw data sources in Looker. This Looker managed data integration and database solution allows customers to quickly go from siloed SaaS tools to unified insights seamlessly.
  • A range of choices for multi-cloud hosting is made possible in Looker 7 using best-of-breed application management powered by kubernetes, including managed hosting in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or Azure clouds.
  • Providing administrators with new insights into their users and how Looker is performing though system activity analytics. With Looker system activity analytics, administrators can quickly analyze user behavior, adoption of data products, or performance issues. In Looker 7, activity data can be joined with other types of data to help control cloud infrastructure costs and data adoption.
  • Continuing to achieve the security certifications of greatest significance to its customers, Looker recently achieved ISO 27001, PCI, and SOC 2 Type I (GCP) certifications, in addition to maintaining its SOC 2 Type II (AWS) and HIPAA Security Rule mapping.
  • Providing an exceptional support experience, Looker 7 launches two new programs. Premier Success is now available to provide additional assistance when there may be staffing constraints, a need for technical skills, when consultation is needed on a new feature and to reduce deployment and adoption risk. Additionally, an expanded Technical Success Manager (TSM) offering is available to provide customers with a technical partner and consultant on-site that is a dedicated, skilled resource for delivering analytical value.

Availability

Looker 7 features will begin rolling out in January of 2020.

Learn more:

• Learn more about Looker 7 HERE
• Read more about Looker 7 in this blog: Making Data Experiences a Reality
• Learn more about how Looker 7 for developers in this blog: Empowering Developers to Create Powerful Custom Data Experiences
• Hear more about Looker 7 in a webinar on Wednesday, November 20th

About Looker

Looker is a unified data platform that delivers actionable business insights to employees at the point of decision. Looker integrates data into the daily workflows of users to allow organizations to extract value from data at web scale. Over 1900 industry-leading and innovative companies such as Sony, Amazon, The Economist, IBM, Spotify, Etsy, Lyft and Kickstarter have trusted Looker to power their data-driven cultures. The company is headquartered in Santa Cruz, California, with offices in San Francisco, New York, Boulder, London, Tokyo and Dublin, Ireland. Investors include CapitalG, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meritech Capital Partners, Premji Invest, Redpoint Ventures and Goldman Sachs. For more information, connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube or visit looker.com.

Looker and associated marks and trademarks are registered trademarks of Looker Data Sciences, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding the expected performance and benefits of Looker's offerings. The words "may," "will," "plan," "expect," and similar expressions, such as statements of belief concerning new, planned, or upgraded product features and developments, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. If the risks materialize or assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. Risks include, but are not limited to delay in product availability, failure to meet or satisfy customer requirements, and slower than anticipated growth in our market. Looker assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release. Any unreleased services, features or products referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase our products and services should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.