Alation to Strengthen Data Trust and Governance in Salesforce Data Cloud

Redwood City, Calif. – September 10, 2024 – Alation Inc., the data intelligence company, today announced a partnership with Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) to deliver trusted, governed data across the enterprise. Alation provides a bidirectional integration that seamlessly delivers data governance and end-to-end lineage within Salesforce Data Cloud, enabling organizations to harness the power of metadata for faster, more confident decision-making while maximizing the impact of their AI initiatives.

Salesforce Data Cloud powers real-time insights and decision-making, driving new customer experiences and growth. Quality results depend on trusted data; poor data governance can surface untrustworthy or outdated data, providing an incomplete picture and weakening the insights derived by AI models. According to Salesforce, nearly 60% of AI users struggle to achieve desired outcomes, with over half distrusting the data used in AI systems. Accurate, compliant, and easily discoverable data is critical for building trust in data and AI initiatives.

The partnership allows organizations to extend their Alation investment across the Salesforce ecosystem, ensuring data integrity and reliability. Essential metadata—such as tags, governance policies, and data quality indicators—from 100+ data sources can be directly viewed in Data Cloud, providing a unified 360-degree view of data governance, usage, and compliance. For example, organizations can now automatically apply data quality indicators and governance policies to customer and sales data, ensuring AI segmentation models are accurate and compliant, reducing errors, and improving targeting. 

“Businesses are eager to adopt AI initiatives, but doing so securely and at scale requires robust governance frameworks,” said Gabrielle Tao, SVP of Product Management at Salesforce. “The seamless integration between Alation’s enterprise-class data governance capabilities and lineage insights, and Salesforce Data Cloud's granular C360 security and trusted AI-based multi-modal data processing behind assisted and autonomous Agentforce, offers our joint customers a bi-directional metadata exchange, enabling users to leverage the unique strengths of each platform. Together, we empower customers to govern their data at high scale, with greater precision and automation, enabling them to confidently drive AI-powered innovations while ensuring data security, compliance, and consistency across their operations."

“Organizations today are drowning in data and pouring significant resources into AI initiatives, yet they struggle to deliver business value quickly due to the sheer complexity and volume of data from countless sources,” said Satyen Sangani, CEO and co-founder at Alation “Our partnership with Salesforce positions Alation as the go-to platform to baseline trust in Data Cloud. We’re cutting through the noise, empowering  organizations to deliver reliable and high-value AI agents, drive product innovation, and optimize business operations."

Together, Alation and Salesforce empower organizations to transform their data into a competitive advantage, driving improved outcomes with trusted, actionable insights through: 

• Frictionless Data Cloud Connectivity: The Alation Data Cloud Connector automates the ingestion of critical metadata for Data Lake Objects (DLOs), Data Model Objects (DMOs), and Calculated Insights (CIs) within Salesforce Data Cloud. This enhances data quality and compliance monitoring, enabling organizations to immediately leverage their existing investments in Alation for consistent governance across all data assets, driving faster time-to-value. 

• Intuitive Data Search and Discovery: Powered by ALLIE AI, Alation automates manual data stewardship, making trusted data easily discoverable within Salesforce Data Cloud. This AI-assisted curation and intelligent search unlock data’s full value, enabling organizations to move at the speed of business, drive AI innovation, and optimize the Data Cloud ecosystem for new and impactful outcomes. 

• Active Data Governance: Alation provides a comprehensive governance framework that automates policy assignments and compliance monitoring across all data assets. Users can easily catalog, classify, and manage data while enabling advanced policies and controls—such as dynamic data masking—within Salesforce Data Cloud and the broader data landscape. This approach ensures compliance with regulatory standards, supports ethical AI practices, and empowers enterprises to proactively manage risk, improve data quality, and sustain long-term AI success. 

• Actionable Data Lineage: Alation automatically tracks and reveals data lineage and provenance within Salesforce Data Cloud, enabling users to trace data flows, transformations, and errors to their root cause. This visibility supports impact analysis, ensuring data remains compliant, trusted, and ready for critical business decisions and AI models. Alation enhances transparency, empowers informed action, and instills confidence in AI-driven decisions by embedding critical metadata—such as policy information and data health indicators.  

Join Jonathan Bruce, VP of Strategic Customer Advocacy at Alation, and Upwan Chachra, Senior Director of Product Management at Salesforce, at Dreamforce 2024 for the session, “Integrate Data Cloud into Your Data Governance Strategy,” on Wednesday, September 18, 2024, from 11:30 AM to 11:50 AM PDT at the Moscone West, L2, Data Cloud Theater. Discover how data governance powers data and AI strategies by enabling business users to find key datasets and ensuring IT compliance.

To learn more, read the blog “Alation Launches Salesforce Connector to Enhance Data Trust.”