
Amazon QuickSight Now Generally Available - itamarl
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2016/11/amazon-quicksight-now-generally-available/
======
apeace
Just want to chime in what a big deal their (very low) pricing is, at least to
me.

As a software engineer, I have been in a tricky situation a couple times when
my boss asked me to build out data visualization features in our internal
admin dashboards--including generic visualization of arbitrary data in our SQL
database.

Of course, the correct answer is, "We have better things to use our time on,
we should buy something for this". But the boss is never happy to hear that:

* These services start at around $1000/month, even for very small-scale data.

* There are additional charges per-user.

* There are additional charges (hundreds per month) for more data sources (e.g. if you have a second SQL database, or dump some data to Redshift)

What's more, it is next to impossible to find pricing information on these
service's web sites. Instead you resort to Quora[0] and hope the information
is accurate.

I have used both Periscope and Looker, and loved them. But according to the
Quicksight pricing page[1], my company could get everything it needs from
Quicksight for under $50/month.

After I hit submit I am planning to run to my boss and tell him I finally
found the one. (Of course, we'll see how the demo goes first ;)

[0] [https://www.quora.com/Can-anyone-share-their-experience-
and-...](https://www.quora.com/Can-anyone-share-their-experience-and-pricing-
with-Periscope)

[1] [https://quicksight.aws/pricing/](https://quicksight.aws/pricing/)

~~~
wellsjohnston
Preach- I'm going through the same process at my company. First I built a
custom dashboard, but I haven't been able to maintain it with all the ad-hoc
visualization requests I get. So I've been looking around for something else.
It basically boils down to sketchy marketing sites (Chartio, Periscope, Mode,
etc.) that end up being very expensive.

I'm very hopeful for quicksight, but unfortunately it feels very clunky and
hard to use at the moment. Hopefully they improve the clunky UI and give it a
SQL inerface.

------
retr0grad3
I was involved in the alpha for QiuckSight and found it interesting. My
feeling is that Amazon realizes that there is a market for data visualization
and analysis for RDS, Redshift, S3 flat files, etc. There are many players in
this space as well as traditional BI companies like Tableau.

QuickSight is going to be leveraged for more than just data analysis. They'll
(probably) be using this for cost exploring and other features down the road
(ELB Log Analysis, VPC Flow Log Analysis).

There are several limitations that I ran into. If you want to use a Redshift
cluster as a data source it has to be a) publicly accesable and b) you have to
whitelist the QuickSight IP range. QuickSight is launched in Amazon's
infrastructure (their account and VPC) and that places limitations on what can
be accessed (no VPC peering).

As an operations engineer, my biggest feedback was "let me launch my own
QuickSight resources in my own VPC". Don't get me wrong, the fact that you get
an AD instance, SPICE DB, and Web UI at a button click is nice, but I want to
have more freedom to control and secure it. Just my two cents.

~~~
neuronexmachina
> you have to whitelist the QuickSight IP range.

How did you find QuickSight's IP range? I saw it referenced in the FAQ, but
couldn't find the actual IP itself anywhere.

~~~
willglynn
It's buried in the QuickSight documentation, which doesn't seem to be linked
from anywhere in the QuickSight product pages:

[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/configure-...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/quicksight/latest/user/configure-
access.html)

I opened a support ticket last night after being unable to find this exact
piece of information. If only there were a way to make a web page reference
some other web page...

------
mangeletti
Amazon will likely begin competing with many of their AWS customers.

Step 1: develop a Trojan horse to gather growth and profitability data
(QuickSight).

Step 2: roll out home-grown apps to compete with their most profitable AWS
customers.

This is exactly how Amazon.com operates[1].

I can only imagine how the conversation went:

    
    
        Bob:   We need to diversify!
        Earl:  You're right! Let's do some research.
        Susan: That'll cost a ton...
        Ed:    Eureka! We'll just let everyone give us their data.
               It'll be a quick sight into all the markets!
        Becky: Ed... You're a genius!
        Ed:    I am?
        Becky: Yes. We'll call it QuickSight!
    

1\. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-
hot...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-hot-seller-
on-amazon-prepare-for-e-tailer-to-make-one-too)

~~~
kevinconroy
This is irresponsible conjecture. AWS has very strict privacy and data safe
guards in place. There are a number of laws (particularly in the EU) that
forbid such practices.

[https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-privacy-
faq/](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-privacy-faq/)

The reason AWS is successful is because Amazon takes privacy and security
seriously. Why does Netflix trust AWS when there's Prime Video? Because
Netflix knows that they have legal recourse against Amazon if they tried to do
anything underhanded. I suspect Amazon would quickly fire anyone who breached
customer data.

~~~
rogerthis
Sincere question: how are such clauses enforced?

------
ernestbro
Strange one from Amazon. They've always provided cloud infrastructure services
for building and launching apps, QuickSight departs from this - it's a ready
to use app.

The logic must be: more money in apps than infrastructure.

Opposite of Google, they have the apps and now want the infrastructure too - I
think it's a mistake for Amazon to go down this route, there is too much
competition in this space and so far playing with QuickSight I don't see
anything new/different from other analytics apps available on Amazon
marketplace [1].

It feels like an experiment vs. a new direction for the company

[1]
[https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/b/2649336011?ref_=gtw_nav...](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/b/2649336011?ref_=gtw_navlft_node_2649336011)

~~~
jasode
_> I don't see anything new/different from other analytics apps available on
Amazon marketplace [1]._

I'm not familiar enough with all those alternatives you cited to make a
feature-by-feature comparison but one key difference is those other tools all
use AMI (vm images). The Amazon QuickSight doesn't seem to need a deployment
and management of any AMI. The customer just uploads a csv or Excel or points
at a data source like Salesforce and instantly starts slicing & dicing the
data. QuickSight seems to be positioned similar to Google's Data Studio
offering.

 _> The logic must be: more money in apps than infrastructure._

That seems inevitable. Amazon AWS proved that IaaS being higher up the value
chain than bare-metal services was more profitable. Rackspace's decline was
proof of that. To continue the climb up the value chain, everybody including
Google Cloud and MS Azure is offering higher valued-added services. Even a
company like Github couldn't survive purely on on hosted Git disk space. (A
"dumb" data pipe and disk space to a shared git repo.) They are moving up the
value chain to build out full life-cycle project management to compete with MS
Visual Team in the cloud.

~~~
candiodari
There's also that they seriously undercut the marketplace solutions in price.
As said before - this is typical for Amazon.

------
estsauver
This is really exciting. I've been wanting to this tool for quite a while, but
because our headquarters are in Africa, we're pretty locked into the EU-West-1
DB.

This, on first look, definitely looks like it will be simple enough to have
our operations team work directly. That's quite exciting!

~~~
AdamN
Where in Africa? I was setting up IaaS in Nairobi 2 years ago (couldn't get
enough funding unfortunately). We should connect adam at varud.com

~~~
estsauver
Nairobi funnily enough. The best hosting provider I've found so far has been
truehost.co.ke. Many places claim to be in Kenya then are actually just
reselling hosting in Europe.

My info's in my profile, I always love to meet tech folk working in Nairobi.

------
paukiatwee
Anyone looking for self-hosted data exploration platform (only SQL), Airbnb's
Superset[0] (previously Caravel) is good alternative.

[0]: [https://github.com/airbnb/superset](https://github.com/airbnb/superset)

~~~
ecesena
It's actually sql and druid. We also use it for vertica (which probably falls
under sql)

------
dmartinez
I was tasked with rolling out a "self-service" BI/reporting tool for all of
our internal users a while ago. My company is on AWS, and at the time
QuickSight was just getting ready to begin the preview period. We felt
QuickSight would be a good option since our data was already in RDS and we had
just decided to buy a Redshift cluster as well.

I evaluated trial versions of the following tools: Looker, Periscope, Mode,
Tableau, QuickSight, and Microsoft PowerBI. They are all very similar in my
opinion and at the end of the day will all provide the ability to view
dashboards and reports through a web interface. The tangible differences come
down to how exactly data refresh happens and the customizability of dashboards
and reports. Each tool also offers varying degrees of useful edge features
like sharing, alerting, privileges, and saved queries. I eventually settled on
Microsoft PowerBI.

The biggest advantage for using PowerBI in my mind is the degree to which
reports can be customized. Compared to QuickSight, PowerBI is leagues ahead in
terms of customization, while still providing enough predefined templates that
you are not constantly thinking about trivial styling choices. More than any
other feature, Microsoft gets this right and executes on it better than any
other BI tool I've tested. There is even a growing gallery of community
visualizations that can be used for free
([https://app.powerbi.com/visuals/](https://app.powerbi.com/visuals/)), and
you can write your own visualization templates using TypeScript.

I've been using PowerBI for several months now, and each month Microsoft
releases an update that targets the biggest frustrations I've had, such as
lack of pre-defined data connections or pre-defined styles. It's still missing
some key features I would like (different forms of aggregations, etc) but it's
still better than QuickSight, no question. As far as pricing goes PowerBI
actually starts with a gratuitous free tier. The free part ends when you want
to enable the "groups" feature, which allows you to set up privileges for
which users can view certain dashboards. The paid version also allows more
data to be stored in the SaaS. You need a premium account which is $10/per
user/per month. The pricing + the speed of creating and uploading reports made
PowerBI the winning tool. So far the team has been very happy with it.

~~~
dnprock
If customization is an important requirement, also check out
[https://vida.io](https://vida.io). It allows you to have full control of the
visualization layer.

------
ernestbro
Apparently QuickSight is an OEM of ZoomData
[http://fortune.com/2016/03/14/zoomdata-adds-amazon-data-
sour...](http://fortune.com/2016/03/14/zoomdata-adds-amazon-data-sources-to-
its-menu/)

------
rrggrr
My concern is morphing terms of use that could give Amazon access to my
business data and insights. Who has the time to monitor evolving terms of use?
I don't.

------
brilliantcode
> At 1/10th the cost of traditional BI solutions

So it begins. How sticky are customers in this space to existing solutions?

------
Alex3917
For $9 per user per month, this seems like not a bad option. Does it have a TV
mode for your KPIs, or is that a use case where you still need to use
Ducksboard or whatever?

------
Diederich
This (and your comments) seem very interesting, but after reading through the
glossy web pages, I honestly can't quite get a bead on what this really does.
As for background, I've been deeply technical, on the back end/server side
since the beginning.

It says I can upload a CSV. What would be in the CSV? One row per sale, for
instance? Does it then do a bunch of magic to, among other things, trend that
pile of data?

Thanks in advance!

------
dnprock
I think open source data visualization is a good alternative to these out of
the box visualization. You have full control of the stack and can grow it.
Switching vendor is always expensive.

Disclaimer: I work at [https://vida.io](https://vida.io), an open source
visualization tool.

~~~
glial
Is Vida cloud-only?

------
mthoms
Does anyone know of an affordable white-label version of something similar?

The idea: Re-sell pre-built dashboards and reports for specific niches.

Of course, you can roll your own using various javascript graphing libraries
but it would be nice if everything was taken care of and one could just build
the various reports and visualizations.

~~~
mthoms
Answered my own question by Googling "white label analytics".

Of note (in case anyone is interested) was this open source project which
appears to be a complete solution:
[https://github.com/piwik/piwik](https://github.com/piwik/piwik)

~~~
ishfuseini
Metabase may also be an option -
[http://www.metabase.com/](http://www.metabase.com/)

~~~
Artemis2
I love Metabase!

------
phonon
Does it support export yet? (.CSV etc.)

~~~
armen52
No, not yet (surprisingly).

------
slig
Direct link to the product page:
[https://quicksight.aws/](https://quicksight.aws/)

The page feels very sluggish on a i7, 16GB MBP. What machines are they using
to test it?

------
wslh
Is this a direct response to Google Data Studio [1] ?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12897415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12897415)

~~~
estsauver
This has been in beta for quite a while I believe. I don't know if Google Data
Studio has been around for longer, but I remember looking at Quicksight at a
previous employer in 2013.

------
bvrlt
Has anyone tried it with a Heroku database? I'm getting an error message
saying that the SSL certificate cannot be verified.

~~~
jmeiss
Same issue for me. If anyone has found a solution, that would be really nice
to share it.

------
jdavila90
Could you analyze a database with coordinates data? For example, querying a
geocoded resource in postgres DB given a radius?

------
tajchert
What are advantages over Google BigQuery? - if somebody is not bounded by
existing Amazon products (EC2, databases etc.).

~~~
dmartinez
The proper comparison to Amazon's offering would be Redshift. The reason you
would go with Redshift over BigQuery is if your data is already in RDS, then
migrating to Redshift is fairly straight forward (just whitelist the IPs in
your security groups).

As others have stated, this offering directly competes with Google's Data
Studio which was recently just announced.

------
johnydepp
I know a few people working on the similar stuff. Old story! Take the idea
from new comers and utilize the brand value.

------
worldadventurer
Anyone know how QuickSight compares to KlipFolio and ZoHo Reports?

------
robmoorman
Great tool

