Alation Is Databricks 2023 Data Governance Partner of the Year

Collaboration is at the heart of Alation. Not only is uniting data and business people in our product DNA, it’s essential to how we work as a company. So it’s particularly rewarding when our esteemed partners recognize us publicly. And it gives me great pleasure to share that Databricks has named Alation its 2023 Data Governance Partner of the Year.

Advances in data governance play a crucial role in establishing a solid foundation for data-driven decision-making, regulatory compliance, risk management, and organizational efficiency. Data governance is also key to high-quality data, which is essential fuel to training LLMs. In other words, governance ensures that data is a strategic asset that can be leveraged effectively to drive business. This award recognizes our contribution to delivering data lakehouse success with data governance.

Centralizing data intelligence for trusted AI and data lakehouse success

The recent Databricks 2023 State of Data + AI report, which notes an increase in AI adoption of more than 1,300%, confirms the growing importance of advanced analytics in this “golden age of data and AI.” To power this new era, companies are turning to data lakehouses, which consolidate data, analytics, and AI capabilities. To ensure the data powering the explosion of AI is trusted, companies also need to invest in data governance.

Alation is the data intelligence platform, delivering federated data governance to ensure the right data is available alongside layers of visibility. So Databricks users can easily find data within the lakehouse and understand the data sources feeding the lakehouse, as well as the destination systems and models relying on that data. By delivering a single source of truth, Alation empowers all data consumers to easily find, understand, and trust their lakehouse data, and put that data into action to deliver trusted AI.

Hear from Alation CEO Satyen Sangani about the award-winning Alation/Databricks partnership during his interview with Bloomberg Technology.

An award-winning partnership

This partnership has also recently taken strides with Alation now accessible via Databricks Partner Connect, which makes our platform available to Databricks Premium or Enterprise customers for a 14-day free trial. 

Databricks is also an investment partner. The company joined our recent Series E financing round, with Andrew Ferguson, VP of Corporate Development & Ventures at Databricks, noting that he was “impressed” with our growth and unique product opportunities.

“It went from being really focused on data catalogs to becoming a much broader data intelligence platform,” Ferguson said at the time, “and one that’s cloud-native and therefore relevant for a much broader set of users within an enterprise, not just analysts or stewards, but all the way down to business users. We really like that ambition. And it aligns with our vision of also expanding the personas that are able to use the Databricks lakehouse within each enterprise.”

Alation's investment in delivering data lakehouse success has also been fortified by our integration with Unity catalog, which enables visibility across workspaces. With Unity, Databricks customers can centrally manage, secure, and access metadata across all their Databricks workspaces. 

As a comprehensive catalog of catalogs, Alation provides visibility to every data consumer across their Databricks workspaces, data sources, and the analytical and AI tools leveraging the data. In other words, Alation users can “zoom back” from their Unity instance, and effectively comprehend their vast data landscapes in all their complexity. 

Fueling “Generation AI” with data and causing a Riot

The official launch of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, was a watershed moment introducing the power of AI to a global audience. But we already knew we’re in the midst of a Cambrian explosion of capabilities that offer automated and intelligent solutions to various data management processes, including within the lakehouse.

That’s the kind of success we’ve delivered to over 100 joint Alation and Databricks customers, including Riot Games. The world-famous gaming company’s Databricks lakehouse on an AWS S3 cloud storage service was bursting with data from 150 million registered users. Alation helps Riot derive value from all its data — which is now trusted, thanks to context and lineage — while improving efficiency and productivity with self-service and automation. 

Sailing toward future lakehouse success

We take great pride in collaborating with the Databricks team to provide a reliable solution that significantly influences the success of data lakehouse projects, revolutionizing the way organizations harness the power of data.

As I reflect on the award, I'm more excited than ever about the potential of Alation to help all Databricks customers achieve continued and expanding business success. Whether that means accelerating cloud migrations, widening adoption for everyone, or powering the next generation of AI projects — I can’t wait to find out.