Alation Announces ALLIE AI as a Co-Pilot for AI Engineers, Data Analysts, and Data Stewards to Accelerate Time-To-Value

Redwood City, Calif. – October 11, 2023 – Alation, Inc., the data intelligence company, today announced ALLIE AI, a co-pilot to increase the productivity of AI engineers, data analysts, and data stewards. ALLIE AI builds upon Alation’s machine learning (ML) capabilities to enable organizations to save time and scale data initiatives more quickly, democratize trusted data, and advance new AI initiatives.

Organizations are racing to ensure enterprise data readiness for critical business initiatives, such as implementing AI-powered strategies through building and training large language models (LLMs). Yet, the volume and breadth of data generated by the explosion of SaaS applications and new personas – such as AI engineers – that need access to that data has held back the delivery of such initiatives. For example, in a recent survey by IDC, organizations responded that the most significant challenge to maximizing the value of their AI/ML initiatives was issues with data availability and data quality¹. 

ALLIE AI automates the documentation and curation of data assets at scale, making it easy for analysts to find that data. ALLIE AI’s intelligent curation capabilities enable organizations to accelerate the population of their data catalog by automatically documenting new data assets and suggesting appropriate data stewards. In addition, ALLIE AI intelligent search and SQL auto-generation enable analysts to find the data they need without needing specialist data analyst skills. ALLIE AI can help analysts easily find customer data without knowing the names of the underlying datasets or how to write SQL. This allows analysts to build AI models and enable data-driven decision-making more quickly without needing a specialized data analyst skillset.

“Data is a strategic asset at GKN Aerospace Engines. To leverage the full potential of our data, it must be described, available, and owned,” said Alexander Grima, Enterprise Data Architecture Lead at GKN Aerospace Engines. “Making this data available and described requires time from its owners, ALLIE AI could be a key enabler to accelerate the curation of data without overwhelming our data experts as the demand for trusted data grows.”

“A data-driven organization can quickly address strategic questions. However, as data volumes grow, locating, understanding, and trusting the data becomes increasingly challenging,” said Junaid Saiyed, CTO at Alation. “This challenge becomes more pronounced when businesses invest in data initiatives like generative AI. Such projects demand extensive data stores to operate as intended. Alation has tackled the ‘4V’ problem – volume, velocity, variety, and veracity – for over a decade by harnessing ML and AI to support comprehension and confident usage. With ALLIE AI integrated into our data intelligence platform, data teams can expedite the discovery of relevant data, gain insights into the lineage of their AI models, and effectively manage business outcomes on a larger scale.”

ALLIE AI increases productivity by enabling AI Engineers, Data Analysts, and Data Stewards:

• Intelligent Curation: Users can accelerate the setup of their data catalog by harnessing auto-curation features. Steward Suggestions uses an AI recommendation system to automatically suggest Data Stewards, Descriptions, and Titles. 

• Intelligent Search: Business teams can easily find and utilize relevant data with Semantic Search, a natural language way to search that focuses on the object’s contextual meaning and provides accurate results. 

• Auto Generate SQL: ALLIE AI helps generate SQL based on natural language search queries, democratizing access to data to non-specialist data personas.

ALLIE AI is in public preview and is expected to be generally available in H1 2024. To learn more about ALLIE AI, visit https://www.alation.com/product/allie-ai/. 

 ^{1. Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending Survey Wave 2, IDC, March 2023, N=952}