Alation Selected to Demonstrate Collaborative Data Catalog in “Innovative BI in Action” Session at Gartner Data & Analytics Summit

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Feb. 28, 2017 – Alation Inc.,the data intelligence company, today announced that CEO Satyen Sangani will present in the “Innovative Business Intelligence (BI) in Action: Emerging Trends You Need to Know” session at the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in Grapevine, Texas. Sangani will demo the Alation Data Catalog in the “Agile Data Cataloging” category of the session on Sunday, March 5 from 3:15–5:15 p.m. CT.

“As more organizations look to foster true, self-service analytics environments, the demand for solutions that automate and simplify data cataloging has grown exponentially, making Alation an important part of connecting data to business value,” Sangani said.

According to Gartner, “By 2020, organizations that offer users access to a curated catalog of internal and external data will realize twice the business value from analytics investments than those that do not.”* In the session, led by Gartner Research’s Vice President of Business Analytics and Data Science Rita Sallam, Sangani will demonstrate why a collaborative data catalog is a foundational part of a modern BI platform. Session attendees will learn how Alation’s enterprise collaborative data platform combines the power of machine learning with human insight to empower employees to find and use the right data for better, faster business decisions.

Alation automatically inventories all of an organization’s data and enriches it by cataloging how analysts have used it in the past. Query components that have been re-used time and time again to analyze data generate proactive recommendations for analyst best practices. When updated with an organization’s data governance policies, the catalog can warn analysts if their use of data is jeopardized by upstream data quality issues or faulty data preparation logic that might negatively impact the insights used for decision-making.

Alation’s data catalog can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and connects to approximately 30 data sources, including data warehousing platforms like Teradata, IBM and Oracle as well as Hadoop distributions and data analysis applications.

The “Innovative BI in Action” session, designed to recognize emerging trends in BI and Analytics, will introduce the Gartner Hype Cycle and the overall market through vendor demos and a Q&A with Sallam. In addition to “Agile Data Cataloging,” the session will cover six total categories selected by Gartner to highlight where each falls on the Hype Cycle and its potential business impact. In addition to Sangani’s demonstration, Alation Head of Product Aaron Kalb will be presenting a session at the Summit, “Alation: Catalog First: A Strategy to Tame Self-Service Analytic Chaos,” on Tuesday, March 7 from 12:45–1:05 p.m. CT. Attend the presentation to hear best practices around data catalog usage and management from successful Alation customer implementations.

Alation’s Sessions at Garter Data & Analytics Summit: Session: Innovate BI in Action: Emerging Trends You Need to Know Speakers: Satyen Sangani, CEO, Alation; TBD Date / time: Sunday, March 5, 3:15–5:15 p.m. CT Location: Grapevine C, Level 3, Convention Center

Gartner is excited to welcome Alation, AnswerRocket, Carto, Salesforce, Narrative Science and Sisense to participate in its demo this year. Data discovery disrupted the traditional, report-centric BI platform market. The next wave of disruption will come from smart data discovery, search, natural-language generation, algorithmic marketplaces and more. This session showcases top innovations with live demonstrations from representative vendors leading in these areas. How do you prioritize your technology investments? How can I use the Hype Cycle to track emerging trends? Which are the vendors to watch? What do the top 3 or 4 innovations look like, and what is the value they provide?

Session: Alation: Catalog First: A Strategy to Tame Self-Service Analytic Chaos Speaker: Aaron Kalb, head of product, Alation Date / time: Tuesday, March 7, 12:45–1:05 p.m. CT Location: Solution Showcase Theater 1, Longhorn E, Level 1, Convention Center

Before you can use data — whether to make a decision, a prediction, or a product (and certainly before you can transform, clean, or integrate it) — you first need to find, understand and trust it. Chief data officers at leading organizations like eBay, Tesco and City of San Diego are turning the analytics process on its head. By starting with a rich, collaborative data catalog, they empower data consumers to leverage what’s known and attain accurate.