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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Alohaj50 (talk | contribs) at 19:45, 25 March 2022 (Updated # of employees, added History sentence on updated number of customers, added History sentence on podcast launch, added Awards sentence on UK great place to work certification.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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
582[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][6][7] The company’s customers include AbbVie, American Family Insurance, Autozone, Cisco, Exelon, Finnair, Munich Re, New Balance, Pfizer, Scandinavian Airlines, and U.S. Foods.[8] [9]

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.[10]

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.[11] Alation grew out of different ideas aimed at solving the same question: How do you connect workers with questions to colleagues with answers?[12]

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.[13] 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.[14][15] He thought crowdsourcing could be used to solve the challenge. In 2012, the team combined those two ideas to create Alation.[16]

Its first solution, a data querying system powered by natural language processing, helped define the modern data catalog.[17][18] The tool was designed to catalog data in an organization and make that data more accessible to more people.[19] This concept is generally termed data democratization.[20][21]

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.[22][23][24][25]

As of early 2021, the company had more than 250 customers,[26][27] including AbbVie, American Family Insurance, Autozone, Cisco, Exelon, Finnair, Munich Re, New Balance, Pfizer, Scandinavian Airlines, and U.S. Foods.[28][29] By October 2021, the company had increased that number to around 300 customers[30], adding GE Aviation, NASDAQ, and Regeneron, among others.[31]

In October 2021, Alation acquired Lyngo Analytics, a data insights company which develops software to help users find insights by asking questions in simple business terms. The acquisition is intended to deepen Alation’s ability to convert natural language questions from non-technical users into SQL queries.

In January 2022, Alation launched the “Data Radicals” podcast[32] hosted by the company’s CEO and co-founder, Satyen Sangani. The show is designed to help business, data, and technology enthusiasts use data in powerful ways. Early guests have included David Epstein, TED-talker and bestselling author of “RANGE” and “The Sports Gene;” Bob Seiner, president and principal, KIK Consulting; Jennifer Belissent, principal data strategist, Snowflake; Paola Saibene, former CTO for the State of Hawaii; and Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, founder and CEO, storytelling with data; and Caroline Carruthers, CEO of Carruthers and Jackson and co-author of “The Chief Data Officer’s Playbook.”[33]

Funding

In early March 2015, the company announced it had raised $9 million in a Series A round led by Costanoa Ventures and Data Collective.[34] Later that month, it emerged from “stealth mode” to launch its data catalog product.[35][36]

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.[37][38] This latest investment round valued the company at $1.2 billion, making it an industry unicorn.[39]

Alation has raised a total of $217 million as of mid 2021.[40]

Operations

Alation is headquartered in Redwood City, CA.[41] The company also has offices in London, U.K. and Chennai, India, and a presence in over 25 countries.[42]

Awards

Alation has been recognized as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions for four consecutive years (2016 - 2020).[43] In 2020, it won the Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice Award.[44]

In 2020, Alation was named a leader in The Forrester Wave: Machine Learning Data Catalogs report.[45] In 2021, Alation was named a leader in The Forrester Wave: Data Governance Solutions report, achieving the highest score out of twelve providers in the current offering category.[46]

Alation has been named to the Inc. Best Workplaces list in 2019 and 2021.[47] Alation was also certified as a "great place to work" in 2022 by the U.K.-based Great Places To Work Institute.[48]

References

  1. ^ "Great Places To Work (UK) - Alation Inc". 2022.{{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. ^ "GigaOm Radar for Data Catalogs Report".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  6. ^ "Alation Named Top Vendor in End-User Study of the Data Catalog Market for Fifth Consecutive Year".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  7. ^ "Alation Adds $110M to Its Catalog". June 3, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  8. ^ "Dude, Where's My Database? And Other GDPR Questions". April 25, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  9. ^ "Top 25 Machine Learning Startups To Watch In 2021 Based On Crunchbase". Jan 10, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  10. ^ "Alation launches data query system based on natural language processing". March 31, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  11. ^ "The Weekly Notable Startup Funding Report: 6/7/21". June 7, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  12. ^ Preimesberger, Chris (April 4, 2015). "Newcomer Alation Connects Dots on All Data Inside Enterprise". eWEEK.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  13. ^ "Forbes Councils - Satyen Sangani".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  14. ^ "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)
  15. ^ "How Alation builds on data catalog for data intelligence". January 6, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  16. ^ "Learn About Alation".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  17. ^ "Alation Adds $110M to Its Catalog". June 3, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  18. ^ "Alation launches data query system based on natural language processing". March 31, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  19. ^ "Alation, a stealthy information-management startup, gets $9M". 4 March 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  20. ^ "The Growing Importance of Data Democratization". 27 December 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  21. ^ 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)
  22. ^ "Databricks unifies data science and engineering with a federated data mesh". 27 May 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  23. ^ "Databricks Unveils Data Sharing, ETL, and Governance Solutions". May 26, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  24. ^ "Where is Snowflake going?".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  25. ^ "Alation adds cloud storage access from hybrid environments".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  26. ^ "Le data catalog, bientôt un livre ouvert pour les métiers".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  27. ^ "Data Catalogs Evolve into Data Intelligence Platforms". 12 October 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  28. ^ "Dude, Where's My Database? And Other GDPR Questions". April 25, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  29. ^ "Top 25 Machine Learning Startups To Watch In 2021 Based On Crunchbase".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  30. ^ Savvas, Antony (March 17, 2022). "Alation expands its channel in EMEA".
  31. ^ Avidon, Eric (January 25, 2022). "Data access key to Regeneron's innovation efforts".
  32. ^ Editorial Team (January 22, 2022). "Podcast Highlights: Data Radicals".
  33. ^ "Apple Podcasts Preview: Data Radicals".
  34. ^ "Alation, a stealthy information-management startup, gets $9M". March 4, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  35. ^ "In a haystack of data, Alation helps find the needle". March 31, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  36. ^ "Alation launches data query system based on natural language processing". March 31, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  37. ^ "Snowflake, Dell and Salesforce back $110M round for data catalog unicorn Alation". June 3, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  38. ^ Roof, Katie (June 3, 2021). "Snowflake-Backed Data Startup Alation Valued at $1.2 Billion".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  39. ^ "Alation Adds $110M to Its Catalog". June 3, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  40. ^ "Snowflake-Backed Data Startup Alation Valued at $1.2 Billion".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  41. ^ "Alation Company Profile".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  42. ^ "Alation Overview".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  43. ^ "Alation Recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  44. ^ "Top 10 Data Catalog Software Solutions". January 27, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  45. ^ "Alation Adds $110M to Its Catalog". June 3, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  46. ^ "The Forrester Wave: Data Governance Solutions Report". July 21, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  47. ^ "Alation Company Profile".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  48. ^ "Alation Inc".
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