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Alation co-founders Satyen Sangani and Aaron Kalb arrived at the solution from two different perspectives. Sangani had a background in economics and had worked as an executive at Oracle.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Forbes Councils - Satyen Sangani|url=https://profiles.forbes.com/members/tech/profile/Satyen-Sangani-CEO-Founder-Alation/987b78ff-12f6-4724-94b4-aac16c6dc3a9|url-status=live}}</ref> He knew data users in large companies struggled to find and trust data; he theorized that machine learning could be used to help them. Kalb had experience in symbolic systems and had worked on Siri at Apple.<ref>{{Cite web|title=This founder helped design Apple's Siri. Now he's building a similar AI tool that could answer people's most pressing questions on COVID-19.|url=https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-siri-designer-building-similar-tool-covid-19-2020-5|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=January 6, 2021|title=How Alation builds on data catalog for data intelligence|url=https://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/feature/How-Alation-builds-on-data-catalog-for-data-intelligence|url-status=live}}</ref> He thought crowdsourcing could be used to solve the challenge. In 2012, the team combined those two ideas to create Alation.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Learn About Alation|url=https://www.alation.com/about-alation/|url-status=live}}</ref>
Alation co-founders Satyen Sangani and Aaron Kalb arrived at the solution from two different perspectives. Sangani had a background in economics and had worked as an executive at Oracle.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Forbes Councils - Satyen Sangani|url=https://profiles.forbes.com/members/tech/profile/Satyen-Sangani-CEO-Founder-Alation/987b78ff-12f6-4724-94b4-aac16c6dc3a9|url-status=live}}</ref> He knew data users in large companies struggled to find and trust data; he theorized that machine learning could be used to help them. Kalb had experience in symbolic systems and had worked on Siri at Apple.<ref>{{Cite web|title=This founder helped design Apple's Siri. Now he's building a similar AI tool that could answer people's most pressing questions on COVID-19.|url=https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-siri-designer-building-similar-tool-covid-19-2020-5|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=January 6, 2021|title=How Alation builds on data catalog for data intelligence|url=https://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/feature/How-Alation-builds-on-data-catalog-for-data-intelligence|url-status=live}}</ref> He thought crowdsourcing could be used to solve the challenge. In 2012, the team combined those two ideas to create Alation.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Learn About Alation|url=https://www.alation.com/about-alation/|url-status=live}}</ref>

In early March 2015, the company announced it had raised $9 million in a Series A round led by Costanoa Ventures and Data Collective.<ref>{{Cite web|date=March 4, 2015|title=Alation, a stealthy information-management startup, gets $9M|url=https://venturebeat.com/2015/03/04/alation-a-stealthy-information-management-startup-gets-9m/|url-status=live}}</ref> Later that month, it emerged from “stealth mode” to launch its data catalog product.<ref>{{Cite web|date=March 31, 2015|title=In a haystack of data, Alation helps find the needle|url=https://www.computerworld.com/article/2904271/in-a-haystack-of-data-alation-helps-find-the-needle.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=March 31, 2015|title=Alation launches data query system based on natural language processing|url=https://sdtimes.com/alation/alation-launches-data-query-system-based-on-natural-language-processing/|url-status=live}}</ref>


Its first solution, a data querying system powered by natural language processing, helped define the modern data catalog.<ref>{{Cite web|date=June 3, 2021|title=Alation Adds $110M to Its Catalog|url=https://www.datanami.com/2021/06/03/alation-adds-110m-to-its-catalog/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=March 31, 2015|title=Alation launches data query system based on natural language processing|url=https://sdtimes.com/alation/alation-launches-data-query-system-based-on-natural-language-processing/|url-status=live}}</ref> The tool was designed to catalog data in an organization and make that data more accessible to more people.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Alation, a stealthy information-management startup, gets $9M|date=4 March 2015|url=https://venturebeat.com/2015/03/04/alation-a-stealthy-information-management-startup-gets-9m/|url-status=live}}</ref> This concept is generally termed data democratization.<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Growing Importance of Data Democratization|date=27 December 2019|url=https://www.cfo.com/technology/2019/12/the-growing-importance-of-data-democratization/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Marr|first=Bernard|date=July 24, 2017|title=What Is Data Democratization? A Super Simple Explanation And The Key Pros And Cons|url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2017/07/24/what-is-data-democratization-a-super-simple-explanation-and-the-key-pros-and-cons/?sh=5c7caf356013|url-status=live}}</ref>
Its first solution, a data querying system powered by natural language processing, helped define the modern data catalog.<ref>{{Cite web|date=June 3, 2021|title=Alation Adds $110M to Its Catalog|url=https://www.datanami.com/2021/06/03/alation-adds-110m-to-its-catalog/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=March 31, 2015|title=Alation launches data query system based on natural language processing|url=https://sdtimes.com/alation/alation-launches-data-query-system-based-on-natural-language-processing/|url-status=live}}</ref> The tool was designed to catalog data in an organization and make that data more accessible to more people.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Alation, a stealthy information-management startup, gets $9M|date=4 March 2015|url=https://venturebeat.com/2015/03/04/alation-a-stealthy-information-management-startup-gets-9m/|url-status=live}}</ref> This concept is generally termed data democratization.<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Growing Importance of Data Democratization|date=27 December 2019|url=https://www.cfo.com/technology/2019/12/the-growing-importance-of-data-democratization/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Marr|first=Bernard|date=July 24, 2017|title=What Is Data Democratization? A Super Simple Explanation And The Key Pros And Cons|url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2017/07/24/what-is-data-democratization-a-super-simple-explanation-and-the-key-pros-and-cons/?sh=5c7caf356013|url-status=live}}</ref>

Revision as of 19:34, 16 July 2021

  • Comment: The topic meets the criteria for notability as per WP:NCORP thanks mainly to analyst coverage. Please be sure that you link to a report from an analyst firm that provides an in-depth description of the company and not just an inclusion on a graph. Also the list of Patents is not required and may appear too promotional. There's also an amount of funding information provided in the the History section - should that not appear in the the Funding section. Also there is no need to provide a breakdown of funding either, that is not encyclopedic nor a reason for the company's notability. HighKing++ 18:29, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Intro overview

Alation
Company typePrivate
IndustryComputer software
Founded2012
FounderSatyen Sangani, Aaron Kalb, Feng Niu, and Venky Ganti
Headquarters
Redwood City, California
Key people
Satyen Sangani (CEO and co-founder)
Aaron Kalb (Chief Data & Analytics Officer and co-founder)
Number of employees
400[1]
Websitewww.alation.com

Alation Inc. is credited with creating the data catalog product category.[2]

Alation is a venture-backed, B2B enterprise software company based in Silicon Valley. Its solutions are focused on data governance, analytics, and data management.[3][4] The company’s primary product, Alation Data Catalog, uses machine learning to catalog an organization’s data across cloud and on-premises file systems, databases, data lakes, and data warehouses.[5] The company’s customers include AbbVie, American Family Insurance, Autozone, Cisco, Exelon, Finnair, Munich Re, New Balance, Pfizer, Scandinavian Airlines, and U.S. Foods.[6] [7]

Alation was founded in 2012 and launched its first product in 2015 to give data consumers  an easy way to search for enterprise data with natural language.[8]

The company takes its name from the word alation, which means “the state of being winged.”

History

Alation was founded in 2012 by Satyen Sangani, Aaron Kalb, Feng Nui, and Venky Ganti.[9] Alation grew out of different ideas aimed at solving the same question: How do you connect workers with questions to colleagues with answers?[10]

Alation co-founders Satyen Sangani and Aaron Kalb arrived at the solution from two different perspectives. Sangani had a background in economics and had worked as an executive at Oracle.[11] He knew data users in large companies struggled to find and trust data; he theorized that machine learning could be used to help them. Kalb had experience in symbolic systems and had worked on Siri at Apple.[12][13] He thought crowdsourcing could be used to solve the challenge. In 2012, the team combined those two ideas to create Alation.[14]

Its first solution, a data querying system powered by natural language processing, helped define the modern data catalog.[15][16] The tool was designed to catalog data in an organization and make that data more accessible to more people.[17] This concept is generally termed data democratization.[18][19]

As the company improved the solution, it eased the building of complex queries with collaboration features, enabled data governance efforts, and integrated with different data and related technology products, such as Snowflake, Tableau, Databricks, and others.[20][21][22][23]

As of early 2021, the company had more than 250 customers[24][25], including AbbVie, American Family Insurance, Autozone, Cisco, Exelon, Finnair, Munich Re, New Balance, Pfizer, Scandinavian Airlines, and U.S. Foods.[26][27]

Research

Alation is the assignee of several patents covering its data catalog and related technologies:

  • U.S. patent 10,776,366 Sergey Astretsov, David Crawford, Venkatesh Ganti, Aaron Kalb, Jake Magner, Minjoon Park, Satyen Sangani: "Computer-implemented method and system for writing and performing a data query" Date of Patent: September 15, 2020
  • U.S. patent 9,244,952 Venkatesh Ganti, Aaron Kalb, Feng Niu, Satyen Sangani: "Editable and searchable markup pages automatically populated through user query monitoring" Date of Patent:  January 26, 2016
  • U.S. patent 8,996,559 Venkatesh Ganti, Aaron Kalb, Feng Niu, Satyen Sangani: "Assisted query formation, validation, and result previewing in a database having a complex schema" Date of Patent:  March 31, 2015
  • U.S. patent 8,965,915 Venkatesh Ganti, Aaron Kalb, Feng Niu, Satyen Sangani: "Assisted query formation, validation, and result previewing in a database having a complex schema" Date of Patent: February 24, 2015
  • U.S. patent 8,935,272 Venkatesh Ganti, Aaron Kalb, Feng Niu, Satyen Sangani: "Curated answers community automatically populated through user query monitoring" date of patent: January 13, 2015

Funding

In June 2021, Alation announced it had raised a series D funding round of $110 million, led by Riverwood Capital, with participation from Sanabil Investments and Snowflake Ventures, as well as existing investors Costanoa Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, Salesforce Ventures, and Sapphire Ventures.[28][29] This latest investment round valued the company at $1.2 billion, making it an industry unicorn (finance).[30]

Alation has raised a total of $217 million as of mid 2021.[31]

Funding Rounds
Series Year Amount (million US$) Lead Investors
A 2015 9 Costaona Ventures, Data Collective
B 2017 23 Icon Ventures
C 2019 50 Sapphire Ventures, Salesforce Ventures
D 2021 110 Riverwood Capital

Operations

Alation is headquartered in Redwood City, CA.[32] The company also has offices in London, U.K. and Chennai, India, and a presence in over 25 countries.[33]

Awards

Alation has been recognized as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions for four consecutive years (2016 - 2020).[34] In 2020, it won the Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice Award.[35]

In 2020, Alation was named a leader in The Forrester Wave: Machine Learning Data Catalogs report.[36]

Alation has been named to the Inc. Best Workplaces list in 2019 and 2021.[37]

References

  1. ^ "Snowflake helps Redwood City data startup Alation join the unicorns with $1.2B valuation". June 3, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  2. ^ "Cataloging Alation's Growth Potential". July 18, 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  3. ^ "Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  4. ^ "The Forrester Wave™: Machine Learning Data Catalogs, Q4 2020".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  5. ^ "Alation Adds $110M to Its Catalog". June 3, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  6. ^ "Dude, Where's My Database? And Other GDPR Questions". April 25, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  7. ^ "Top 25 Machine Learning Startups To Watch In 2021 Based On Crunchbase". Jan 10, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  8. ^ "Alation launches data query system based on natural language processing". March 31, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  9. ^ "The Weekly Notable Startup Funding Report: 6/7/21". June 7, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  10. ^ Preimesberger, Chris (April 4, 2015). "Newcomer Alation Connects Dots on All Data Inside Enterprise". eWEEK.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  11. ^ "Forbes Councils - Satyen Sangani".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  12. ^ "This founder helped design Apple's Siri. Now he's building a similar AI tool that could answer people's most pressing questions on COVID-19".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  13. ^ "How Alation builds on data catalog for data intelligence". January 6, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  14. ^ "Learn About Alation".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  15. ^ "Alation Adds $110M to Its Catalog". June 3, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  16. ^ "Alation launches data query system based on natural language processing". March 31, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  17. ^ "Alation, a stealthy information-management startup, gets $9M". 4 March 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  18. ^ "The Growing Importance of Data Democratization". 27 December 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  19. ^ Marr, Bernard (July 24, 2017). "What Is Data Democratization? A Super Simple Explanation And The Key Pros And Cons".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  20. ^ "Databricks unifies data science and engineering with a federated data mesh". 27 May 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  21. ^ "Databricks Unveils Data Sharing, ETL, and Governance Solutions". May 26, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  22. ^ "Where is Snowflake going?".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  23. ^ "Alation adds cloud storage access from hybrid environments".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  24. ^ "Le data catalog, bientôt un livre ouvert pour les métiers".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  25. ^ "Data Catalogs Evolve into Data Intelligence Platforms". 12 October 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  26. ^ "Dude, Where's My Database? And Other GDPR Questions". April 25, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  27. ^ "Top 25 Machine Learning Startups To Watch In 2021 Based On Crunchbase".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  28. ^ "Snowflake, Dell and Salesforce back $110M round for data catalog unicorn Alation". June 3, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  29. ^ Roof, Katie (June 3, 2021). "Snowflake-Backed Data Startup Alation Valued at $1.2 Billion".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  30. ^ "Alation Adds $110M to Its Catalog". June 3, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  31. ^ "Snowflake-Backed Data Startup Alation Valued at $1.2 Billion".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  32. ^ "Alation Company Profile".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  33. ^ "Alation Overview".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  34. ^ "Alation Recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  35. ^ "Top 10 Data Catalog Software Solutions". January 27, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  36. ^ "Alation Adds $110M to Its Catalog". June 3, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  37. ^ "Alation Company Profile".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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