Alation launches Open Data Quality Initiative

Alation says that leading data quality and data observability providers such as Acceldata, Anomalo, Bigeye, Experian, FirstEigen, Lightup, and Soda, and industry partners including Capgemini and Fivetran, have joined Alation in support of its newly launched Alation Open Data Quality Initiative for the Modern Data Stack. The program provides customers with the freedom of choice and flexibility when selecting the best data quality and data observability vendors to fit the needs of their modern, data-driven organizations.

The Open Data Quality Initiative was designed to accelerate data governance and access to trusted self-service analytics for the broadest range of data consumers. Data quality is a top priority for organizations that are automating processes and creating new products and services using data. Alation’s Open Data Quality Framework (ODQF) opens up Alation Data Catalog to any data quality vendor in the modern data stack, and provides teams with unrivaled openness and interoperability that best suit their needs.

"Data quality has been an intractable problem for decades," said Sanjeev Mohan, recent Gartner research vice president. "Data catalogs have become the go-to source to discover, store, and act on metadata. As such, data catalogs are well-positioned to address the data quality problem today. Alation's solution is unique, as it marries its state-of-the-art catalog with a choice of DQ partners for customers to choose from. This flexibility delivers the most optimal solution for a varied data and analytics landscape."

“Our research shows that data quality is the most impactful data governance issue organizations face affecting 89% of survey participants,” said Dave Menninger, SVP and Research Director, Ventana Research. “Alation’s Open Data Quality Initiative will help organizations more easily establish and maintain quality and trust in their data.”

“The data quality and data observability space is quickly evolving. Many vendors have developed solutions that fit the different and unique needs of our customers,” said Raj Gossain, Chief Product Officer, Alation. “The future of the modern data stack is interoperability and freedom of choice; organizations no longer need to invest in a single tool from a single company. That’s exactly why we are creating an ecosystem of best-of-breed data quality and data observability partners that interoperate with Alation. ODQF was created with our customers' needs in mind. Now they have the option to pick one or several data quality and data observability vendors that best fit their organization’s requirements, while ensuring that Alation is the single source of reference for their comprehensive data intelligence needs.” 

Alation’s ODQF partners will have access to a developer SDK that includes an open API, easily accessible documents via a developer portal, and partner onboarding tutorials with integration best practices. This integration provides data consumers with instant access to the data quality rules, metrics, and warnings they need across the broadest possible range of vendors, seamlessly integrated into the UX of the market-leading Alation Data Catalog.

Alation 2022.2, available today, accelerates data governance capabilities. The business glossary features enhancements to the user interface and discoverability of glossaries and related business terms. The Stewardship Workbench within the Data Governance App includes new bulk actions for assigning and removing stewards, and updating custom fields, making compliance and auditing easier. The latest release also extends automated column level lineage to SQL Server to help diagnose critical issues. 

“At Kestra Financial, we need confidence that we’re delivering trustworthy, reliable data to everyone making data-driven decisions,” said Justin Mikhalevsky, Vice President of Data Governance & Analytics, Kestra Financial. “We are excited about Alation’s interoperability with Bigeye as it gives all users, not just data engineers with technical expertise, a way to easily determine whether they can trust the data and use it right away.”