Top 10 Reasons for Alation with Snowflake – Introduction

By Ibby Rahmani

Published on August 17, 2021

10 Reasons to Choose Alation with Snowflake | Alation

In 1911, the English and the Norwegian teams were racing to be the first humans to reach the South Pole. In a 400-mile journey with 10,000-foot climb, the two teams experienced -60 F temperatures, white-out blizzards, and wind chills surpassing 100 miles an hour.

On day 54, the Norwegian team planted their flag and journeyed back safely. The English team arrived 34 days later only to find the flag of their rivals.

One team achieved the extraordinary, while the other perished in the polar night. What made the difference? How could the team with less resources win?

The answer is simple: the Norwegian team had a superior approach and a singular focus. They traveled by sled-dog and skis, and they focused on one goal of reaching the South Pole first. The English had dogs — but as a backup option; further, they were distracted by scientific obligations. The Norwegian team’s strong Greenland dogs could run in the polar winter and follow instructions. They adapted to the environment and surged ahead.

The race to the South Pole offers a brutal lesson: approach is key. On your journey to the Data Cloud, you need a superior approach to help you achieve your ultimate goals. You need an adaptive solution that adjusts to the unique realities of your business environment.

In this case, the right Enterprise data catalog can be your Greenland dog in an unpredictable landscape. The right catalog can help you transition to the Snowflake Data Cloud quickly and safely.But be warned: Not all data catalogs are created equal.

The Alation Data Catalog is built as a platform, unifying disparate data into a singular view. The Alation Data Catalog enables you to leverage the Data Cloud to boost analyst productivity, accelerate migration, and minimize risk through active data governance.

In this 4-part blog, we will discuss the top 10 reasons to choose the Alation Data Catalog for your Snowflake Data Cloud Implementation.

Snowflake Data Cloud: A Modern Data Platform

Enterprises are making major investments in their data and analytics capabilities, both to help manage growth in data and to cope with emerging data governance and regulatory pressures.

According to IDC, by 2025, global data will grow to a whopping 175 zettabytes, and much of that growth will be in the cloud. “This is approximately four times the amount produced in 2020 according to the World Economic Forum,” notes IDC.

How are folks managing this surge in volume? Many are turning to Snowflake for its modern cloud data warehouse, which offers flexibility, cost savings, and governance capabilities across an entire data ecosystem. The Snowflake Data Cloud is one unified environment where teams can collaborate on all sorts of data, bringing many different workloads together in a secure, governed manner.

Yet too often, the journey to Snowflake ends up being long and complex. To succeed, enterprises first need to understand all their data, both in legacy systems and the Data Cloud. And once they’ve migrated, they need to realize the benefits of the Data Cloud quickly. On top of that, they must ensure that data is being governed correctly – while complying with privacy policies.

Alation Data Catalog

Alation is a catalyst to a successful Snowflake implementation When used with Snowflake, Alation enables organizations to understand all their data, go-live fast, drive adoption, and govern their data in the cloud.

Alation surfaces crucial metadata, so users have context on an asset’s full history, and a clear idea on how to use it. Alation connects to all your enterprise data sources both within Snowflake and outside of Snowflake, whether in another cloud or on-prem. It automatically builds a unified view for all the data and provides you intelligence, like which data is most actively used, how it is used, and what data assets might be related and relevant.

This data intelligence helps you accelerate migration to the Snowflake Data Cloud by ensuring that you only migrate what matters: what is useful and relevant to your organization.

Alation simplifies data governance by embedding it into the UX. This means you are guided as you work, with best practices appearing within your natural workflow; data health flags (like data quality, privacy policy, age, etc.) promote awareness and guide proper usage.

Are you keen to promote data literacy and data culture? Alation helps folks to easily find data through google-like search. Conversations store tribal knowledge and democratize wisdom around how to use data best. Crowd-sourced descriptions, conversations, and wiki-like articles empower you to better understand every asset.