Things continue looking up for data analytics provider Looker. Today it announced version 7 of its namesake platform in what is the first major release since Google announced plans to buy the startup for $2.6 billion in cash in June.

Looker 7 aims to provide organizations more data value beyond simply putting it in a report or on a dashboard. It's an attempt to change how the industry approaches business intelligence, the vendor claims. 

In an interview with SDxCentral, Looker VP of product marketing Pedro Arellano said that historically the notion of business intelligence in analytics has been tied to this idea of putting numbers on colored bars or line graphs, which is an essential use case that will continue to be critical to help organizations understand their business. “But it's becoming very clear that it's now only one use case as opposed to the use case,” Arellano added.

Looker’s core technology allows users to connect to databases — regardless of location — and aggregate data across multiple databases. Its platform includes a set of tools that allows users to perform data manipulation to extract more value from data beyond generated reports on a dashboard. 

Arellano said customers are using Looker 7 to build marketing bots that automatically adjust bids on online ads and modify the base of the ads up or down depending on performance. One customer in particular uses Looker 7 to test the security of all its networks and servers 100,000 times per day.

“At no point in that flow does anybody see a dashboard or report, but it is still a data use case,” he said.

Looker raised around $280.5 million through several funding rounds since its founding in 2013. Its investors included CapitalG, which is Google Cloud parent company Alphabet’s growth equity investment fund.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian explained in a blog post that Looker’s platform can tap into Google’s BigQuery data warehouse platform. This will allow it to extend Google Cloud’s business analytics by providing the ability to supply a consistent way to define business metrics across data sources. It also provides an analytics platform to deliver applications for business intelligence.

The Looker deal is the biggest acquisition for Google Cloud since Kurian was named CEO late last year. Kurian previously spent 22 years at Oracle where he was responsible for leading Oracle’s shift to a cloud technology company.

Though the Looker deal has not yet closed, this update plays into one of Google Cloud's key strategies: multicloud flexibility.

Looker 7 is built on top of a Kubernetes-based architecture with multicloud housing options on Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). 

Arellano said that what multicloud really means is choice — choice of database, choice of the hosting environment, and ultimately multiple choices for data delivery. 

“At the end of the day, we really want to be very agnostic,” Arellano said. “When it comes to where and how they [customers] deploy, we just want to make sure that we give them the architecture and the tools to do that in whatever fashion makes the most sense for them.”   

Looker 7 has new software development kits (SDKs) that have something for everyone. For front-end Web developers there's a JavaScript/Typescript SDK, for the data science team a Python SDK, and for mobile developers Kotlin and Swift SDKs. 

Also included in the update is a codegen feature that will enable users the ability to build language specific SDKs according to whatever language they're comfortable working in.

“Looker really should be thought of as a development platform on which we happen to build a BI tool,” Arellano explained. “A lot of what makes Looker special is the fact that it was built by engineers and developers that understand how developers think.” 

In addition to supplying developers with embedded SDKs, a new developer portal will act as a central hub for documentation, samples, an API explore tool, and blogs. The updated marketplace, Arellano said, will be a place of community where users can access shared assets deploy them within their own Looker instance.