Enterprise data intelligence startup Alation Inc. is jumping on the artificial intelligence bandwagon today, announcing a new copilot called ALLIE AI that’s intended to increase the productivity of anyone who regularly works with large datasets.

It’s said to be able to automate the documentation and curation of data assets at large scale, making it easier for analysts to find the data they need.

In addition to ALLIE AI, Alation announced the launch of Alation Analytics Cloud, which it says is a unified reporting platform that provides a visual map of an enterprise’s data usage. It uses these insights to rate the company’s data initiatives and the overall maturity of its data culture, Alation said.

Founded in 2012, Alation is a well-funded startup that offers an enterprise data intelligence platform that combines data with human brilliance. It says its platform is ideal for organizations that collect massive amounts of information to track and understand buyer behavior, manage supply chains, inventory, sales, customer service and other business processes. It provides a suite of search and discovery, governance, stewardship, analytics and transformation tools to help companies manage their data more effectively.

ALLIE AI is now in public preview and expected to become generally available next year, Alation said. With its intelligent data curation capabilities, companies will be able to accelerate the population of their data catalogs by automatically documenting new data assets. It will also suggest appropriate data stewards for each new piece of data.

Besides helping to organize data, ALLIE AI has intelligent search and Structured Query Language auto-generation abilities that will make it easier for analysts to find the information they need, without resorting to specialist skills. For instance, data analysts will be able to find customer data without knowing the names of the underlying assets, and without needing to write SQL queries, the company said.

In this way, ALLIE AI will help to increase the productivity of anyone who regularly works with data, including AI engineers, data analysts, data scientists and data stewards, according to the company.

According to Alation Chief Technology Officer Junaid Saiyed, the task of locating, understanding and trusting data becomes increasingly challenging as data volumes grow, hence the need for a copilot. “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,” he said.

Understanding the value of data

As for Analytics Cloud, it’s all about helping organizations to measure the value of their data initiatives and see what impact they have on the overall business, the company said. It’s generally available now, and will help customers to rapidly grow their “data culture.”

With Analytics Cloud, companies now have a framework to articulate the business value of each data initiative. Its query log ingestion feature helps leaders to understand which data sources are most frequently used and who is running those queries. With this information, it’s possible to map data consumption across the entire organization to measure the effectiveness of different data programs and ascertain how mature its data culture really is.

In addition, Analytics Cloud’s insights will help organizations to rationalize their data sources. For instance, they can migrate the most often used data assets to a storage environment that enables rapid access, while retiring those assets that are no longer being used. This will help optimize data storage costs, Alation said.

Maxine Geltmeier, data governance manager at First United Bank & Trust, a subsidiary of First United Corp., said Analytics Cloud is useful because it’s paramount for her organization to understand and illustrate the value of its data initiatives. “We need to know our data maturity level and which data programs align with key organizational priorities and drive business value,” she explained.

Image: Alation