Looker Launches Looker 5 Data Platform

Looker this week released Looker 5, its next generation data platform, which simplifies daily workflows through integrations with Zendesk, Salesforce.com, Google Adwords, and more via the Action Hub and offers purpose-built Applications by Looker, Viz Blocks for nearly limitless visualizations, and Data Blocks to add valuable public data to any analysis.

Looker's flagship business intelligence tool also gained new features like Data Merge to combine data from different databases, 57 new statistical functions, a new SQL runner with visualizations, and more.

"We believe that the notion of just using a standalone BI tool is antiquated, limiting and inefficient," said Frank Bien, CEO of Looker, in a statement. "Forward-thinking data-driven companies want a complete data platform to help operationalize their business using data. Looker 4 made that possible; Looker 5 makes it easy. It is our most complete and flexible platform, a comprehensive, secure, and integrated data stack that is agile and expandable. It is the platform on which companies are building the next-generation of data-driven business applications."

New features within the Looker 5 platform include the following:

• Action Hub, which helps users take action on insights directly from within Looker. Integrations in the Hub allow users to change the status on Zendesk support tickets, ship reports and dashboards to Google Drive or Box, or pause underperforming Adwords campaigns. The Action Hub will launch with direct built-in connections to these services as well as hundreds more through middleware tools like Zapier and Segment.
• Looker Blocks, including Viz Blocks, which instantly provide 10 visualization types (with more coming soon) and the ability to create custom visualizations; Data Tools that give end users highly curated analytic experiences; and Data Blocks that help users join their data with pre-modeled external datasets like weather data or demographic data.
• Applications, built on the Looker Data Platform, that leverage all of Looker's capabilities to access, analyze, and take action with data. The first three offerings will be Marketing Analytics by Looker, IT Operations Analytics by Looker, and Event Analytics by Looker. These department-specific, plug-and-play solutions give people the data and analysis they need, as well as the ability to take real action, all in a single interface built on the same platform as Looker's BI tool.
• Data Merge, allowing users to merge results from two or more disparate datasets, even if that data lives in different databases. This will help customers examine time-series data, geographic data, and other summary data from multiple sources in a single interface.
• Druid Support: Looker now supports the Druid data store so users can ingest massive quantities of event data in Druid and use Looker to run low-latency queries on top of the data.
• Statistical Functions: 57 new functions that support statistical procedures so users can run statistical tests, compare distributions with their data, and reshape data as needed.
• SQL Runner Visualizations that enable users to search, sort, save, and visualize data directly.

Looker 5 will roll out to customers in October.

---

Related Articles

Qubit Partners with Looker on Personalization

The partnership will enable ecommerce businesses to unlock the power of their data.

Looker Releases Looker Blocks for Google Services

Looker Blocks for Google's BigQuery Data Transfer Service helps marketers turn data into actionable insights.

Looker Unveils Looker Data Apps

Looker Data Apps are available for specific industry and business segments.