Alation launches Alation Cloud Service for Snowflake

Alation, a specialist in enterprise data intelligence solutions, has launched of Alation Cloud Service for Snowflake.

The new offering has been launched in partnership with Snowflake, the Data Cloud company, and is designed for departments and organisations of all sizes to start cataloguing data on Snowflake’s platform. The package makes data governance easy and accessible, enabling organisations to start small, flexibly expand by adding data connectors, users, and data objects, and support use cases like cloud data migration for less than $100k.

Raj Gossain, chief product officer at Alation, said: “As the leader in data intelligence solutions, Alation continues to see success across the enterprise segment with more than 25% of Fortune 100 companies as customers.

“We’re increasingly seeing organisations of all sizes become serious about data-driven innovation and building a data culture. To help organisations looking for an affordable entry option, we created Alation Cloud Service for Snowflake to empower anyone to find trusted, quality data. Optimised for Snowflake, this edition provides a great way to start the data cataloging journey.”

The new Alation Cloud Service package sits atop Alation’s cloud-native, multi-tenant architecture and includes deep Snowflake integrations that deliver active data governance. Alation Cloud Service for Snowflake empowers Alation and Snowflake’s joint customers to identify their most valued data, make trusted data visible and actionable to all data consumers, and ensure the data is used properly.

“Alation Cloud Service for Snowflake is a great option for any enterprise beginning their data cataloging journey,” said Sunny Bedi, CIO and CDO, Snowflake. “Alation’s deep data governance integration with Snowflake and self-service analytics capabilities makes it fast and easy to use and govern critical data stored in the Snowflake Data Cloud.”

Alation Data Catalog automatically ingests metadata and then combines machine learning and human curation to make metadata more intelligent and useful. This powers comprehensive search and discovery of trusted data and sets the foundation for specific features below.

Key capabilities of Alation Cloud Service for Snowflake include:

Policy management and enforcement: Alation Policy Center allows Snowflake data policies to be extracted, curated, and managed in one place for complete visibility. Policies can be applied and enforced to new data in Snowflake, directly from Alation, for end-to-end control.
Tags to classify and protect data: Alation ingests, applies, updates, and synchronises Snowflake Object Tags for streamlined data classification. As a result, tagged Snowflake data objects are easier to protect and find in Alation.
Automated column-level lineage and impact analysis: Alation automatically populates interactive column-level lineage graphs for granular comprehension of data relationships. Impact Analysis can then be performed to identify downstream data and who is affected by changes, simplifying compliance audits.
Intelligent SQL editor and query forms: SQL queries can be scheduled and published back to the catalog for others to share and reuse. Query forms convert SQL queries into simple forms, empowering users of all technical levels to self-serve answers to analytical questions, without relying on data analysts.

“Organisations start their data cataloguing journeys in different ways. But they all have one thing in common – the need to find, understand, and govern data, easily,” said Howard Dresner, founder, and chief research officer at Dresner Advisory Services. “Data catalogues provide the technology to simplify the creation of and access to analytical content and provide collaboration and governance capabilities for that content to make it more trustworthy and broadly available.”

Alation Cloud Service for Snowflake is a reflection of Snowflake and Alation’s growing partnership. In June 2022, Alation was named Data Governance Partner of the Year by Snowflake for the second consecutive year and was awarded five competency badges in the Snowflake Partner Network Competency Program.

All Snowflake users can now sign-up for a 14-day free trial of Alation via Snowflake Partner Connect. The free trial gives users the opportunity to experience Alation and educate themselves on how Alation can catalogue data in Snowflake.