Two Years Running: Alation Is Snowflake’s Data Governance Partner of the Year!

By Tracy Eiler

Published on June 14, 2022

A bussiness handshake with the focus on the hands.

It’s not déjà vu — it’s a repeat! For the second year in a row, Snowflake has named Alation its Data Governance Partner of the Year. The announcement was made at Snowflake Summit this week (visit us at booth 2009!).

And we’re just as proud, excited, and thankful as when we received the honor last year. This back-to-back recognition is testament to Alation’s essential role within the Snowflake partner ecosystem at the intersection of data cloud migration, active data governance, and self-service.

Together with Snowflake, we help more than 125 joint customers (including Cisco, Nielsen, and Finnair, to name a few) deliver value in their industries. But we also improve the experience — and make life easier — for data users at those companies, from the experts (data stewards, scientists, and analysts) to stakeholders at every level who use data to drive their decisions.

Growing Partnership

After Snowflake recognized us last year, we certainly didn’t rest on our laurels. In September we introduced Policy Center as part of our Data Governance App. where you can create policies in one location and get complete visibility into how policies are mapped to data. This allows users to manage Snowflake data governance policies in a comprehensive and scalable manner to meet security and compliance objectives.

Shortly thereafter, we joined Snowflake’s Data Governance Accelerated Program, designed to help software companies and application developers build, operate, and grow their applications on Snowflake. Alation was among the select group of partners accepted into the program by building integrated governance solutions with Snowflake to support joint customers on their data governance journeys.

We also teamed up with Snowflake to define key use cases for the CDMC (Cloud Data Management Capabilities Framework) with the EDM Council. For the uninitiated, the CDMC is a framework that enables enterprises to “pressure-test data management procedures and demonstrate good practice to regulators.” Our joint work has helped to lay a crucial foundation for cloud governance processes and techniques — clarifying the “how” behind future use cases, like data sovereignty and cross-border data movement, privacy impact assessments, security controls, and data sharing agreements, all of which are relevant to financial services.

Additionally, Alation was one of the first five featured Snowcases, industry and technology solutions by Snowflake’s trusted partners to support the Snowflake Data Cloud journey. The Snowcase highlighted the ways Alation’s Active Data Governance and Snowflake’s Data Cloud provides a trusted view of vital business metrics at Texas Mutual Insurance Company (TXM), Texas’ leading provider of workers’ compensation insurance, to accelerate decision-making with confidence.

Finally, it would be remiss not to mention how our partnership goes beyond governance of cloud data. Last year, Snowflake Ventures made a significant strategic investment in our Series D fundraising, a reflection of the value we bring all Snowflake customers.

Igniting Joint Success with Spark NZ

Spark NZ, a telecommunications company, is a joint customer with high market saturation where 2.5 million of the 5 million New Zealand residents are subscribers. By choosing Alation Data Catalog to promote faster data search and discovery, Spark NZ leverages Alation and Snowflake’s governance features to foster data democratization.

Balancing access and innovation with compliance is a key challenge for the organization. Spark already has standards for classifying and tagging data, and some permissions are implemented directly in Snowflake, but Spark leans on Alation for governance while allowing access to the data that business units need. Alation Data Catalog doesn’t just make it easier for data users at Spark to find the right data – it also accelerates Snowflake adoption.

“Using Alation alongside Snowflake has enabled a step-change in our data governance capability and visibility of enterprise data for users across Spark NZ,” said Peter Langham, Domain Chapter Lead, Data Engineering at Spark NZ. “It has significantly improved both productivity and quality of insights for our data analysts through a common understanding of our data assets.”

A Quintet of Core Competencies

Snowflake Summit 2022 saw the launch of the Snowflake Partner Network (SPN) Competency Program, which rewards and validates Snowflake partners for the depth of their Snowflake expertise and commitment to driving customer impact across the Data Cloud ecosystem.

It’s an honor to receive a single SPN Competency badge. Alation received five, proving our competency measures fitness for a specific sector, demonstrating Alation and Snowflake’s broad usability across all business types and industries:

Alation Is the Treasure Map for Your Data

Alation enables better reporting with wider, guided access to trusted data in the Snowflake Data Cloud. Organizations in every industry use Alation to identify their most valuable Snowflake data and collaborate around it at scale.

Want to learn how Alation can help tackle your data governance challenges?