Alation

Alation is a data intelligence platform founded in 2012 that enables organizations to catalog, discover, understand and govern their enterprise data assets. The company's flagship product, Alation Data Catalog, allows users to search and access data using natural language queries while providing context through metadata management. The platform automatically crawls and inventories data from various sources like data warehouses, lakes, and business intelligence systems, using machine learning to parse technical metadata, user permissions, and business descriptions. As of 2024, Alation's platform includes capabilities for data governance, lineage tracking, quality management, and collaboration features through dedicated apps. The company achieved over USD 100 million in annual recurring revenue by November 2022, with its data catalog solution starting at USD 60,000 for a 12-month subscription. In addition to its core catalog offering, Alation provides connectors for integrating data from various sources and a Data Governance App for creating and enforcing data management policies.

Key customers and partnerships

Alation serves over 570 enterprise customers across 32 countries as of 2023, including major corporations like Cisco, General Mills, Munich Re, Pfizer, Nasdaq, Salesforce, and eBay. The company counts more than 25% of Fortune 100 companies as clients, spanning industries such as finance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, retail, insurance, and technology. In the public sector, Alation's customers include the US Environmental Protection Agency and Australia's Department of Defense. In November 2022, Alation formed a strategic partnership with Databricks to jointly develop engineering, data science, and analytics applications leveraging both companies' platforms. The company also maintains technology partnerships with major cloud platforms and data warehouse providers, with a particular focus on the Snowflake and Databricks ecosystems.