Gartner Names Alation a Leader in Metadata Management

Alation was named a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management. This is the fourth time that Alation has been named a leader in the Magic Quadrant. The report credits Alation for its strength in three key areas: active metadata management, innovation in machine learning, and leadership in data cataloging.

Dominating Active Metadata Management

In the report, Gartner recognizes Alation’s focus on active metadata stating that, “Alation has continued to expand its vision and is investing in product capabilities and ways to deliver value from increased analyst productivity and from analytics stewardship use cases. It now embraces the value proposition of being an active metadata platform.” Gartner goes as far as to state that, “In reviewing inputs from all available sources, it should be noted that Alation dominates scoring for active metadata management.” Active metadata management is key to Alation’s ability to make metadata engaging for business users. *

Innovating with Machine Learning

In the report, Gartner notes that, “Alation continues to extend its innovation with ML application.”* Machine learnåing is core to Alation’s ability to surface intelligence on data and data use. That intelligence improves nearly every aspect of the data catalog from enhancing discovery with natural language and popularity-driven relevancy rankings to improving data governance with flags and suggestions in-workflow.

Leading the Data Catalog Market

In the report, Gartner recognizes Alation’s leadership in the data catalog market: “Alation has been a leading vendor in this market since its entry into it with data catalogs, and is well known for its data-cataloging capabilities.” More than 200 innovative enterprises leverage Alation to make it easier to find, understand, and govern data. From Hulu leveraging Alation to instill trust and accessibility in data to Cisco using Alation to drive active data governance, Alation is helping enterprises create thriving data cultures.

A Must-Have for Data & Analytics Leaders

Not only has Gartner named Alation a leader in metadata management but they have also called the data catalog a must-have for data & analytics leaders. Gartner was one of the first major analyst firms to identify the growing spike in data catalog adoption in their report titled Data Catalogs are the New Black in Data Management and Analytics.

According to Gartner, “Demand for data catalogs is soaring as organizations continue to struggle with finding, inventorying and analyzing vastly distributed and diverse data assets. Data and analytics leaders must investigate and adopt ML-augmented data catalogs as part of their overall data management solutions strategy.”**

Leader with a Capital L

Gartner isn’t the only major analyst firm to name Alation as a leader. Well-respected analyst firms including IDC, Constellation Research, and Dresner Research have all placed Alation in leadership positions in the data catalogs on the market. Forrester named Alation the the clear leader in the Forrester Wave: Machine Learning Data Catalogs:

“As metadata and business glossary technology becomes outdated and less effective, improved machine learning will dictate which providers lead the pack,” according to the report’s author Michele Goetz, Forrester VP and principal analyst.***

Although each of these reports evaluates data catalogs differently, what’s clear is that Alation is always at the top of the pack, no matter what the criteria.

*Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions by Guido De Simoni, Mark Beyer, Ankush Jain, Alan Dayley, 11 November 2020

**Augmented Data Catalogs: Now an Enterprise Must-Have for Data and Analytics Leaders by Ehtisham Zaidi and Guido De Simoni, 12 September 2019

***The Forrester Wave: Machine Data Learning Catalogs, Q4 2020.