Alation’s New Data Products Builder Agent: Build Better Data Products—Faster

As organizations race to leverage data in the age of AI, one thing is clear: the demand for trusted data at the speed of business has never been greater. Business leaders want correct answers fast, and analysts don’t want to muddle through tens of thousands (or even millions!) of existing tables to figure out which are “consumption ready.” 

Neither data engineers nor analysts enjoy having an ever-growing multi-month backlog of requests for slightly different cuts of similar data. And they don’t just want any data; they want reliable, well-governed, and fit-for-purpose insights that can guide both strategic decisions and enhance day-to-day operational processes. 

Enter the age of the data product.

Data products are curated, reusable datasets built with business use cases and outcomes in mind. They represent a seismic shift in how organizations think about data, moving from scattered assets to well-defined, governed, and discoverable products. 

Applying product thinking is powerful in several key ways: 

• Data products are built starting with business outcomes 

• Data consumers are positioned as internal customers 

• Data products have clear owners who work with these customers to incorporate feedback and evolve and grow the product with changing needs. 

And the momentum is undeniable. According to Gartner’s 2024 CDAO Agenda Survey, 50% of organizations have already deployed data products, and another 29% are actively considering them. But despite the excitement, scaling this approach has been anything but easy.

Today, we’re proud to introduce the Alation Data Products Builder Agent, a new capability that helps organizations create high-quality data products faster, starting with business use cases and utilizing generative AI and the power of catalog metadata to suggest, request, and publish data products. 

Key challenges in enterprise data management today

Despite massive investments in modern data infrastructure, many organizations still face a fundamental issue: turning raw data into real business value remains slow, fragmented, and error-prone. Why?

The answer lies in three core challenges:

Business-data disconnect: Business users lack data literacy, while data teams often miss business context—leading to misaligned, underutilized data assets and stakeholder frustration. Also, even across business teams, there are multiple different definitions of commonly used metrics that require harmonization and alignment. 

Low data usability: Teams waste time searching for data that often proves incomplete, noncompliant, or irrelevant—leaving as little as 1–3% of data usable for business.

Scalability challenges: Data product creation depends on siloed expertise, which turns engineering into a bottleneck and stalls the shift toward scalable, reusable, domain-driven assets.

Introducing the Alation Data Products Builder Agent: Addressing the challenges

The Alation Data Products Builder Agent directly tackles these enterprise data challenges—offering a powerful, AI-driven experience to streamline the creation of trusted, business-aligned data products.

AI-powered business-technical translation

Instead of writing lengthy technical specs, users can start with their business use cases, OKRs, and metrics they’re trying to measure in creating data products. For example:

“As a retailer, we’re launching a loyalty program and need a 360 view of the customer across marketing, sales, fulfillment, and operations.”

The system then uses Alation’s AI capabilities to suggest a data product and recommend existing relevant data assets—automatically mapping business needs to technical tables and columns, suggesting an ideal logical data model for consumption, generating descriptions, and more.

This bridges the communication gap between business and technical teams and across different business units, significantly accelerating alignment and reducing ambiguity. Where assets already exist in a ready-to-consume state, the data product can be published directly to the data marketplace for immediate consumption.  

Usable, governed, trusted data

Once the system identifies potential data assets, users can explore, filter, and preview them—all within a governed framework and with integrations to hand off the requirements to a data engineering team for additional development:

• Data product owner identification assigns data owners based on source ownership and usage patterns. 

• Auto-generated metadata to promote reuse and visibility

• One-click publishing to the marketplace with access instructions 

The result: a curated, contextualized set of building blocks you can trust and feed into dashboards as well as AI models

Standardized, scalable creation process

The Data Products Builder Agent introduces a repeatable, consistent framework for data product creation by utilizing the YAML-based Open Data Product Specification (ODPS). This allows for standardization while enabling cross compatibility across different systems and catalogs. 

The data product revolution

What sets data products apart from traditional data assets?

Effective data products are:

• Accessible – easy to find and use

• Reusable – designed for multiple use cases

• Trusted – validated, governed, and compliant

• Purpose-built – aligned with real business needs

The payoff is massive. Research from Harvard Business Review shows that organizations using a product-based data model see implementation times 90% faster and costs 30% lower than traditional methods.

Alation’s Data Products Builder operationalizes this new model—making it accessible to everyone in the organization, not just data engineers.

Learn more about data products in our white paper, The Data Products Blueprint: 10 Key Attributes for Faster Business Impact.

Conclusion: Fueling smarter AI and decision-making with trusted data products

The Alation Data Products Builder Agent simplifies and accelerates the creation of high-quality, governed data products—laying the foundation for successful AI. With built-in automation, trusted governance, and business-aligned delivery, organizations gain:

• Faster access to AI-ready data

• Certified, context-rich data products that power intelligent decisions

• Stronger alignment between data teams and business stakeholders

• A scalable, standards-based approach to AI-driven innovation

As enterprises scale their AI initiatives, trusted data products are no longer optional—they’re essential. Alation continues to lead the way, helping over 40% of the Fortune 100 transform data into business impact with confidence, clarity, and speed.

Learn more about data products with Alation:

• Register for the webinar, What Is a Data Product – And How Do You Build One?

• Explore the Data Products Marketplace

• See our professional services offering, the Data Products Playbook