Alation Launches Channel Program to Drive Data Catalog Adoption

Alation has launched a two-tier channel program as part of an effort to spur greater adoption of data catalog within enterprise IT environments.

As the amount of data that organizations are trying to keep track of continues to grow data catalogs have emerged as a key technology that enables organizations to deliver self-service analytics applications to end users, says Alation CEO Satyen Sangani.

Without a consistent means of describing and inventorying data sets it becomes next to impossible to keep track of what data set is the most up to date, notes Sangani.

“It’s a knowledge management problem,” says Sangani.

The Alation Partner Program has launched with 12 partners, including Agilisium Consulting, Information Asset, Tableau, and Teradata. Technology partners such as Tableau and Teradata have already proven themselves to be a key part of Alation’s go-to-market strategy, says Sangani.

Thus far, Alation has a little over 100 deployments; a number Sangani says the company hopes to significantly expand as channel partners become trained and certified on the Alation Data Catalog.

As part of the channel effort Alation has also developed a suite of sales enablement tools, developed a deal registration system and is making co-marketing dollars available to partners, says Sangani. Alation is also interested in joint product development opportunities, says Sangani.

Channel partners that are most likely to be successful deploying enterprise-wide data catalogs typically have experience building or deploy analytics applications or have data governance expertise, says Sangani. Other potential channel partners that have enjoyed success have expertise in data management, adds Sangani.

Just about every provider of a database or data warehouse has added a data catalog capability in the last two years. Alation is making a case for a data catalog approach spanning multiple data sources that are typically strewn across the enterprise. The opportunity for channel partners is to bring some order to the chaotic manner that data is all too typically managed.