Alation Joins the HPE Pathfinder Club

Groucho Marx once quipped, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”

Fortunately, the rest of us don’t feel that way, and I’m thrilled to share Alation’s admission to a new club dedicated to innovation. Alation has been named a Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, the venture capital program of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), as a Pathfinder organization and category-leading startup in data management and data catalogs.

But this is more than mere recognition. It’s an investment from HPE in a strategic collaboration between our teams. What we build will help customers access, analyze, and protect their data — no matter where it lives. Together, we will inspire innovation, not just within the Alation–HPE partnership, but also for the customers leveraging HPE’s edge-to-cloud solutions.

What Is HPE Pathfinder?

If you’re not familiar with Pathfinder, here’s how HPE describes it:

Though the cloud offers many benefits — including usability, scalability, and reduced infrastructure costs — some apps and data must remain on-prem because of security and compliance concerns. HPE “brings the cloud” to these apps and data with Greenlake, its edge-to-cloud platform that delivers a secure, comprehensive, end-to-end cloud experience with:

• with resources that are easily accessed and shared

• through a unified platform

• through self-service and the advantages of cloud infrastructure

HPE has selected Alation as a partner to help innovate in these crucial areas and enhance cloud-data capabilities for organizations everywhere.

Why Has HPE Invested In Alation?

Toward the end of 2021, Pathfinder announced its intention to significantly ramp its rate of investment over the next year with investments in partners to help solve key customer challenges across edge computing, the cloud, and data overall.

HPE is dedicated to helping organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking value from all of their data, wherever it resides — and we couldn’t be better aligned. As HPE expands its edge-to-cloud strategy by increasing investment in organizations conquering edge/cloud/data obstacles, Alation was recognized as a category-leading startup that integrates with the HPE product portfolio.

And by “category-leading,” we mean:

• Achieving the highest scores possible (in 17 criteria) in the most recent Forrester Wave™: Data Governance Solutions report

• Being named Snowflake’s Data Governance Partner of the Year — for the second year in a row — as customers leverage the dynamic duo of Alation Data Catalog and Snowflake Data Cloud to reduce risk and accelerate productivity, while also integrating the Cloud Data Management Capabilities Framework (CDMC)

• Raising Series D financing to reach a valuation of $1.2 billion — i.e., unicorn status

The Cloud Storage Challenge

Optimizing cloud storage is a core challenge for many enterprises today. Hosting an entire data environment in the cloud is costly and unsustainable. It also presents security risks. Alation makes the most valuable data the most visible, adding crucial context so people can understand it quickly. This empowers data leaders to know what to prioritize for the cloud. Not only does this reduce cost and risk, it empowers analysts to collaborate around the business’ best data from anywhere in the world.

“The proliferation of data assets is driving complexity for HPE’s customers but offers tremendous opportunity if organized and effectively used,” said Paul Glaser, Vice President and Head of Hewlett Packard Pathfinder. “Our investment with Alation will allow HPE’s customers to surface rich metadata information from their data assets and utilize it to deliver increased value to their customers.” That rich metadata fuels a range of use cases, from governance to data democratization initiatives.

“Alation’s data catalog will enable our enterprise customers to realize their corporate data governance initiatives, allow for data transparency and democratization of data across the company,” added Ali Wasti, Managing Director at Hewlett Packard Pathfinder. “Alation helps assist customers to have proper oversight of the enterprise’s data assets.”

For these reasons, HPE selected Alation as a partner in building joint go-to-market programs that foster innovation and digital transformation for HPE customers. Receiving Pathfinder recognition goes a long way toward achieving our goal of ensuring data is easy to find, understand, and leverage for trusted business intelligence.

And we’re proud to be part of the club.

Learn more at the HPE Discover Conference

As part of the designation, Alation will exhibit at HPE’s Discover conference from June 28–30 in Las Vegas.

I’ll have the privilege of joining a session with other data leaders hosted by HPE’s SVP & GM of Data Management SaaS, Infrastructure & HCI, Omer Asad. Entitled “Harnessing Data for Innovation,” the session will feature a discussion on maximizing data use throughout an organization.

This conference will offer cutting-edge insights in secure connectivity, hybrid cloud, AI, and unified data analytics, with thought leaders in these spaces from all over the world.

Register for the edge-to-cloud conference here.