5 Alation Customers Sharing Data Successes at Snowflake Summit 2023

By Anthony Lempelius

Published on June 1, 2023

Snowflake Summit is the premier event for data cloud strategy, and it’s coming to Caesars Forum in Las Vegas on June 26–29.

As a 2-time Snowflake Data Governance Partner of the Year, Alation knows how important this event is to the Snowflake community. The Alation team will be in attendance sharing how data intelligence for the data cloud is key to data cloud success — stop by booth #2320! But just as exciting are the sessions featuring senior-level leaders and technical experts from Alation customers, including:

DIRECTV
Discover Financial Services
Salesforce
SparkNZ
Thomson Reuters

Read on to learn more about how Alation customers leverage the power of data in the Snowflake Data Cloud. We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Every Data, Everywhere, All at Once with DIRECTV

Who: Joe Conard, principal big data engineer at DIRECTV

When: Tuesday, June 27, at 12:30 p.m.

Session Link: MD219: Every Data, Everywhere, All At Once with DIRECTV

In a competitive content-provider market, data insights offer a unique competitive edge for providing the best entertainment experience. That’s why viewership analytics are key to DIRECTV’s success.

Yet DIRECTV’s original environment made rising to this challenge impossible. That environment included 2,400 interfaces between 50+ applications that directly assign consumers data access, plus more than 30 additional applications providing data. This was a data scientist’s nightmare and made it difficult for them to advise the business on how to respond to market conditions.

The data governance team’s solution? Move their data from multi-company shared warehouses to a data mesh with source and consumer data hubs in Snowflake to democratize access. Today, more users can easily access metrics, KPIs, and other transformed information.

Join this session to learn how DIRECTV partnered with Alation to map their new dataverse, which includes Snowflake data sources (hubs), glossaries, enhanced metadata for metadata objects, lineage, and quality.

How Discover Plays Data Offense and Defense

Who: Prakash Jaganathan, senior director of data and analytics engineering at Discover Financial Services (DFS)

When: Wednesday, June 28, 11 a.m.

Session Link: AA107: How Discover Plays Data Offense and Defense

Discover Financial Services (DFS) wanted to automate pipeline creation. They also recognized that to become 100% data-driven, first they had to become 100% metadata-driven. Their solution was a metadata strategy that plays offense and defense to build an enterprise data catalog using Alation.

Join this session to learn how DFS uses Snowflake and Alation to deliver complete, accurate, and accessible metadata with an intuitive, personalized search experience that also grows adoption. Prakash will detail how DFS today can deploy new financial markets faster while overcoming a dependency on tribal knowledge and multiple metadata platforms. He’ll conclude by revealing how the team has achieved a decentralized “data governance 2.0” to empower individual business units with self-service capabilities.

Metadata Matters: Salesforce’s Secrets to Designing a Cloud Data Platform

Who: Vikas Sangwan, global head of data platform and engineering at Salesforce; Murali Kallem, head of data platform at Salesforce; and Matt Turner, director of industry and partner strategy at Alation

When: Wednesday, June 28, 3 p.m.

Session Link: MD111: Metadata Matters: Salesforce's Secrets to Designing a Cloud Data Platform

As a leading platform for managing customer relationships, Salesforce is on a mission to optimize operations and improve customer experiences with data. Key to guiding that mission is metadata. For this reason, Salesforce has invested in metadata to help users navigate the complexities of their Snowflake Data Cloud and ensure everyone can access and use data with confidence.

Join this session to hear from two Salesforce data platform leaders, who will demonstrate the crucial role of active metadata in shaping their Data Cloud strategy. Today, the Salesforce data team uses Alation to identify systems, establish robust data governance, and enhance data accessibility — with the power of active metadata. By combining Alation with Snowflake, Salesforce can deliver the appropriate data to the relevant individuals exactly when they need it.

Telecom Executive Panel

Who: Fawad Qureshi, Industry Field CTO at Snowflake; Jonathan Bruce, vice president, products, Alation; Matt Dugan, vice president, data platforms, AT&T; Kallol Dutta, Spark Group Automation Leader, Spark NZ; Peter Huang, Sr. Director, T-Mobile, Group Data and Automation Leader, Spark NZ; and more.

When: Wednesday, June 28, noon

Session Link: Telecom Executive Panel

Today, we take ever-present connectivity for granted. Our global telecom networks encompass both individuals and devices – while presenting telecom operators and equipment providers with a unique chance to cultivate more strategic partnerships with their customers.

This invitation-only Executive Track session will explore how telecom leaders today are leveraging Snowflake to introduce cutting-edge data-driven services that drive the growth of the data economy.

…And more!

As if this weren’t enough, we’re happy to share that other partners and customers will shine a spotlight on how they use Alation to power data-driven decision-making for their respective businesses:

In Matillion’s session with ALTR, “Build a Barrier-Free Data Stack with Open Source Data Governance Integrations with ALTR”, founder James Beecham will explain how they use Alation to create open integrations that enable users to enable seamless data governance and security throughout all levels of their modern data stacks.

As the world’s leading information hub for professional networks, Thomson Reuters manages masses of data. In their session, “Accelerating Data Insights with Data Access Automation in Snowflake”, Carter Cousineau, VP of Data and Model (AI/ML) Governance and Ethics will share how they use Alation with Snowflake and Immuta to support tag-based masking at the domain level to empower the right users with the right data faster.

Finally, join us for a hands on lab on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon (starting at 11:30 and 2pm, respectively). In “Scalable Governance with Snowflake and Alation” our very own Gene Arnold, Solutions Architect, and Michael Meyer, Technical Product Marketing Manager, will share how to:

Implement governance for Snowflake data
Enable users to find and understand data, fostering trust
Explore Alation’s integration with Snowflake for data access and collaboration
Safeguard sensitive data with Snowflake’s role-based masking policies
Seamlessly create and manage Snowflake access policies from Alation

Today, investing in data governance is crucial for organizations to comply with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, and CCPA. However, managing risk and accommodating growth can be challenging. Join Gene and Michael to discover how people are using Snowflake and Alation to mitigate compliance risk, boost user productivity, and enhance data usage.

A truly epic Summit

Our whole team is really looking forward to this event! In many ways, last year’s Summit emphasized the importance of data governance for a range of use cases, from cloud migration and data discovery to curation and writing superior SQL queries. So we were thrilled to be recognized in 2022 as Snowflake’s Data Governance Partner of the Year. In 2023, we’re excited to unveil a new range of use cases data governance continues to power – but you’ll have to join us live at a session to learn what those are!

Attending Snowflake Summit? To learn how Alation’s data intelligence platform powers cloud transformation, data governance, and self-service analytics, visit Alation’s booth #2320.