Introducing the New Replicate Source for Open Lakehouse

There's a conversation happening in a lot of data teams right now. It goes something like this: the lakehouse is clearly where things are heading, Apache Iceberg is becoming the format everyone wants to land in, and the AI use cases the business is asking for need clean, open, queryable data. The problem is that the pipelines moving that data have been running reliably on Qlik Replicate for years - and "let's rebuild everything from scratch" is not a plan anyone wants to bring to a Monday morning meeting.

This is exactly the gap that Replicate Source for Open Lakehouse was built to close.

Keep Replicate. Gain Iceberg.

Replicate Source for Open Lakehouse is a new feature in Qlik Talend Cloud that enables existing Qlik Replicate deployments to land data into Apache Iceberg tables using Qlik Open Lakehouse - without upgrading the existing Replicate installation.

The entry point is the cloud object storage target your Replicate tasks may already be writing to. Open Lakehouse picks up from there, using a new Replicate landing task type that understands Replicate's output natively. Configure it once, and the pipeline continuously writes and optimizes Iceberg tables. No Replicate upgrade. No pipeline migration. No new ingestion layer to manage.

For organisations with large, complex source environments - mainframe systems, SAP, legacy RDBMS - this matters. These are the sources Qlik Replicate has always handled well, and Replicate Source for Open Lakehouse means that capability doesn't stop at csv or parquet in cloud object storage. It extends all the way to a fully managed, interoperable Iceberg lakehouse.

Why Iceberg, and why now

Apache Iceberg has moved from interesting open-source project to de facto standard faster than most expected. It gives data teams ACID transactions, schema evolution, time travel, and - critically - the ability to query the same tables from multiple engines without copying data. Snowflake, Databricks, Amazon Redshift, Google Big Query, and most modern query engines can all read native Iceberg tables. That interoperability is exactly what makes it the right foundation for AI-ready data architecture.

The challenge for Replicate customers has been the absence of a clear, guided path from their existing cloud object storage output into Iceberg format - one that doesn't require rebuilding pipelines or introducing a new ingestion layer just to get data into the right format. Replicate Source for Open Lakehouse is that path.

Why Qlik Open Lakehouse is the best route to Iceberg for Replicate

Once data is landing in Iceberg, the full capability of Qlik Open Lakehouse in Qlik Talend Cloud becomes available. The Adaptive Optimizer handles auto-compaction, file sizing, and orphaned file management automatically - the kind of housekeeping that would otherwise consume engineering time. Zero-copy mirroring means Iceberg tables can be made available in Snowflake, Databricks, Google Big Query or Amazon Redshift without cloud data warehouse ingestion fees; for teams currently running direct Replicate-to-Cloud Data Warehouse pipelines, that alone can represent a meaningful cost saving as data volumes grow. A recent study by Nucleus Research showed customers moving ingestion workloads from Data Warehouse compute to Qlik Open Lakehouse are saving up to 70% on their ingestion compute bills.

Ingestion and optimization of data into Iceberg format runs on low-cost, spot instance compute clusters inside customers’ VPCs, and is billed on compute core-hours rather than data volume - a model that tends to work favourably for the kinds of high-frequency CDC workloads Replicate customers typically run.

For Replicate customers, the message is straightforward. The investment you've made - in tasks, in source configuration, in the people who know the pipelines - is preserved. What changes is what's possible at the other end.

The lakehouse is open. Replicate Source for Open Lakehouse is how you get there.

Try it for yourself

If you’re interested in trying this new feature and seeing if it simplifies your lakehouse ingestion workloads, we’re running hands-on workshops where you can set up and run your first Iceberg ingestion pipeline with Qlik Replicate and Qlik Talend Cloud. Register here.