Data Faces Podcast — On Location · Qlik Connect 2026
Michael Norris, COO of Digital Hive, on giving enterprise users one front door for analytics content across Qlik, Power BI, Tableau, and the rest of the BI estate.
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About Michael Norris
Michael Norris is Chief Operating Officer at Digital Hive, an analytics hub and catalog that gives enterprise users one place to find content built across Qlik, Power BI, Tableau, and other BI tools.
In this interview
- Why large enterprises rarely have just one BI tool
- How an analytics catalog gives users one front door to the answers they need
- Why Digital Hive focuses on consumers while authors keep using the tools they know
- How a catalog can insulate end users from BI migration churn
→ Read the companion article: Learn more about Digital Hive
→ Browse all on-location interviews: Data Faces Podcast — On Location
Full transcript
David Sweenor 0:02 [music] Hello and welcome to the Data Faces podcast. I’m David Sweenor, your host for today’s show. We are coming to you live from Qlik Connect 2026. I’m with Michael Norris of Digital Hive. He’s the Chief Operating Officer. Michael, welcome to the Data Faces podcast. Thanks for having me. So, uh part of the name of the show is Data Faces. So, I like to get behind the people and the technology. So, what was your first job before your LinkedIn profile existed?
Michael Norris 0:29 My first job was marine captain. So, I captained a tour boat, triple decker, Thousand Islands tour, just like the song used to be. Yep. And then moved
David Sweenor 0:40 into analytics. Wow. Like what part of the world was this in? This was in the St. Lawrence River. So, area called the Thousand Islands. Oh, wow. Well, fantastic. And can you tell us a little bit about yourself and Digital Hive?
Michael Norris 0:51 What what are you all about? So, Digital Hive is an analytics hub or an analytics catalog. Okay. What we do is we recognize that you know, what Qlik wants everybody to come to Qlik. Unfortunately, there’s other tools out there. Large companies have Power BI, Tableau. There’s lots of tools. got like a thousand tools. Or they’re trying to get to one tool. Sure. We allow them to catalog all that information, all those assets, into one location so that the users have one place to go to get to the answers they need. Okay.
David Sweenor 1:19 And so, what’s been the um sort of the the feedback what are you hearing from from customers and prospects here at the show about, you know, kind of what what they’re what are they looking for?
Michael Norris 1:31 So, so far they’re overwhelmingly positive. Of course, I’m not going to tell you any different, but of course overwhelmingly positive. Yeah, exactly. Um but no, I mean that this is a great show for us cuz there are customers that still have Qlik View, they still have Qlik Sense, Qlik Cloud. Some of them are are on their migration journey. They can definitely see using something like us to help them move from one tool to another because we can help insulate that change from end users. But, you know, we do say those dirty words, you know, do you have Power BI, do you have And they they’ve got some of that stuff lurking around. They don’t want to don’t want to necessarily acknowledge it, but they know those end users want one location to go to find their analytics and then hopefully move them to Qlik.
David Sweenor 2:08 And can you tell us like a little bit about the types of users? Are these analytics professionals or are these people in all sorts of lines of business and and work?
Michael Norris 2:18 So, we focus on the end users. So, we don’t we don’t engage directly with the authors. They they continue to author in whatever tool they they’re in now. So, if they’re still using QlikView, God bless them. They can use QlikView. If they’re using Qlik Sense, they can still author in Qlik Sense. It’s just the content now surfaces through us. We don’t re-visualize. We don’t touch the data.
David Sweenor 2:38 Right. You’re sort of aggregating all the different millions of reports that exist in the business into a coherent sort of single pane of glass. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but so people can understand it.
Michael Norris 2:49 And the Netflix of BI. Sometimes that’s how we talk about ourselves. Wow. Well,
David Sweenor 2:53 and and how how how’s the show going and the energy level, you know, for you? What any any takeaways you’re you know, you’re hearing from the all the announcements that that Qlik has made?
Michael Norris 3:01 Really positive. Overwhelmingly positive. So, I will say I’ve been to a number of shows where AI, you just feel like you’re beaten over the head. Everything here feels like it’s in context. Feels like it has value. I I think Qlik’s doing a good job. And again, the energy here has been great for the first day. Um yeah, overwhelmingly positive. All
David Sweenor 3:19 right. Well, Digital Hive, check them out. We’re coming to you live from Qlik Connect 2026. Thanks for joining the podcast. Thanks, dude. Cheers. Cheers.