Introducing the Alation Data Products Marketplace: Trusted, High-Impact Data at Speed

Modern organizations face a persistent challenge: balancing rapid insights with the need for trust, security, and compliance. Business leaders need fast access to data, but centralized data teams often become bottlenecks, delaying decision-making. Conversely, decentralized teams promote agility but can introduce inconsistencies in quality and governance. This tension, known as the "Speed vs. Trust Conflict," prevents organizations from fully harnessing their data.

The solution? A structured approach to data product management. By treating data as a product—designed for usability, governed for trust, and built to drive measurable business value—organizations can overcome this conflict.

To help enterprises operationalize data products at scale, Alation is launching the Data Products Marketplace, a centralized platform that enables businesses to create, manage, and consume high-quality, reusable data products efficiently.

Read on to learn how this new platform empowers businesses to operationalize data, accelerate AI adoption, and enable self-service analytics—without sacrificing speed or data governance.

Data products as the foundation of a modern data strategy

Centralized teams prioritize control and governance to ensure data integrity… but often become bottlenecks. One study found that more than 70% of business experts experience data access delays exceeding a day, with over 20% waiting more than five days, hindering timely decision-making. Decentralized teams enable agility but can introduce risks like inconsistent quality and poor governance. Notably, 74% of business stakeholders identify data quality issues before data teams, leading to operational inefficiencies and potential financial losses.

The result? Organizations find themselves caught between sacrificing speed for control or vice versa, ultimately limiting their ability to leverage data quickly or effectively.

Data products provide a structured, reusable way to package data assets for business use. Unlike raw datasets or one-off reports, data products are intentionally designed, documented, and governed for discoverability, accessibility, and impact. A well-designed data product meets key criteria:

• Accessible: Easily discoverable via a marketplace with clear metadata and ownership.

• Reusable: Designed to support multiple use cases without redundant effort.

• Trusted: Governed for quality, security, and compliance.

• Value-driven: Aligned with business objectives and measurable outcomes.

Perhaps most importantly, data products are purpose-built to deliver measurable business value. Each data product is designed to be generally usable for a range of use cases, with clear metrics to measure its impact and alignment with organizational goals. This direct link between data products and business outcomes ensures that data initiatives are focused on driving tangible results, rather than simply producing more data.

According to Gartner’s 2024 Chief Data and Analytics Officer (CDAO) Agenda Survey, 50% of organizations have already deployed data products, and another 29% are actively considering them. This shift underscores the growing importance of formalized data product management.

Introducing the Alation Data Products Marketplace

Alation's new Data Products Marketplace transforms how enterprises create, manage, and consume trusted data products. This platform streamlines the entire data product lifecycle, empowering organizations to operationalize their data assets rapidly for maximum business impact.

The Marketplace serves as a hub where business users, applications, AI systems, and data teams can seamlessly discover and leverage high-quality, reusable data products. It enables the delivery of trusted data at business speed without compromising governance or compliance.

Key benefits for top users include:

1. Data producers can publish, manage, and optimize data products with insights into usage patterns.

2. Data consumers can leverage intelligent search to find curated, standards-compliant data products.

3. Governance teams can manage and implement central policies and standards while decentralizing labor-intensive data product management.

“Before having a data marketplace, data users would ask thousands of questions daily about where to find and how to use the data,” shared one Alation customer in retail. “Providing a self-service marketplace to access the data products, using a familiar shopping experience to access and subscribe to the data product, has helped immensely.”

Accelerating AI and automation with trusted data products

The rise of AI-powered applications and autonomous decision-making amplifies the need for structured, metadata-rich data products. AI agents rely on high-quality, well-documented data to generate accurate insights and avoid biased or unreliable outcomes.

By providing governed, reusable data products with clear lineage, security classifications, and data quality metrics, Alation’s Data Products Marketplace ensures that both human users and AI systems can operate with confidence. As one enterprise data architect noted, “We’ll let humans use data assets, but AI is only going to use data products.”

Professional services support

To assist customers in their data product journey, Alation offers the Data Products Playbook, a 6-8 week engagement  designed to guide teams in:

• Defining data product requirements aligned with business needs.

• Establishing a scalable data product operating model.

• Leveraging Alation’s capabilities to document and manage data products effectively.

For those existing customers ready to begin immediately, Alation recommends starting with Doc Hubs as a foundational layer. While migration to the new Marketplace will require some effort, it provides immediate value in establishing a data product operating model and lifecycle.

Conclusion

The Alation Data Products Marketplace marks a significant step forward in solving the Speed vs. Trust Conflict. By enabling organizations to centralize data product management while supporting distributed teams, the Marketplace helps enterprises unlock:

• Faster access to trusted data

• Scalable AI and automation initiatives

• More efficient and impactful data governance

As a trusted partner to 40% of the Fortune 100, Alation continues to lead the way in enterprise data management, helping organizations deliver high-quality, well-governed data products at the speed of business.

To learn more:

• See the Alation Agentic Platform, Documentation Agent, and Alation Data Quality product pages

• Explore the Data Products Marketplace

• Read the press releases: Alation Agentic Platform, Data Products Marketplace, Data Quality

• Explore our professional services offering, the Data Products Playbook