Press Release • May 18, 2017
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — May 18, 2017 — Alation Inc., the data catalog company, today announced the addition of Max Ochoa as chief financial officer and general counsel, Madhu Talluri as vice president of engineering and Matthew Edwards as vice president of customer success. The key hires will allow Alation to scale to meet market demand. The business intelligence and analytics market is projected to reach $18.3 billion in 2017, according to Gartner, and Alation fills a critical gap in the space by enabling users to find, understand and trust their data in order to drive business value from their analytic technology investments.
“We’ve seen increasing demand for the Alation product and data catalogs in general from large enterprises like Albertsons, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Pfizer and Wells Fargo,” said Satyen Sangani, CEO, Alation. “Max, Matt and Madhu are leaders distinguished by their proven ability to drive product and business growth at enterprise software companies. With the addition of these exceptional leaders to the team, we are well positioned to take advantage of the sizable market opportunity ahead of us while ensuring the success of the large enterprises that we’re selling into.”
Ochoa brings 18 years of experience in finance, human resources and legal to Alation. In his dual role as CFO and GC, Ochoa will enable the company to build the systems and processes required for the business to scale to take advantage of market demand. Prior to Alation, Ochoa held C-level and GC roles at rapidly growing companies, including Turn Inc. (acquired by Amobee/Singtel) and Adify Corporation (acquired by Cox Enterprises).
“As a finance professional, I know how challenging it is to find reliable, trusted data to support critical decisions,” Ochoa said. “I am excited to join Alation because our data cataloging solution directly addresses that challenge for the Global 2000.”
Talluri is a seasoned engineering leader, who joins Alation after spending 13 years at Microsoft as an engineering manager and architect, most recently leading the team delivering live site tooling for Office 365 Exchange Online. While at Microsoft, he also led innovative projects related to Windows Kernel, .Net, and Bing Ads. Prior to Microsoft, he served for nine years as an engineer at Sun Microsystems, including four years as a distinguished engineer. Talluri’s experience building quality, enterprise-grade solutions for demanding customer deadlines will be instrumental in enabling Alation to maintain the strong pace of innovation for its collaborative data catalog.
“Alation delivers a solution that is both feature-rich and user-friendly with an approach unseen in the BI and analytics space,” Talluri said. “I look forward to helping grow and guide this capable engineering team as we look to meet customer needs and address the increasing number of enterprise use cases.”
Edwards is a talented global customer success leader with experience heading customer success efforts for WhiteHat Security and ShoreTel. He has a well-rounded technical and operational background, having served as chief operating officer of his own startup, In Four Technologies, earlier in his career. At Alation, he will be instrumental in understanding the evolving needs of customers and guiding their experiences.
“Few companies are doing more than Alation to improve how organizations work with data,” Edwards said. “I’m excited to join this innovative team and guide Alation’s understanding of the experience of analysts and business users working with data, day in and day out.”
In addition to the appointments of Ochoa, Talluri and Edwards, Alation has named Eric Brisson as chief revenue officer. Formerly Alation’s executive vice president of customer development, Brisson will focus on driving scalable and sustainable revenue growth for the company.
For more information, please visit alation.com/about.
Alation is the data intelligence company. Nearly 600 global enterprises — including 40% of the Fortune 100 — rely on Alation to realize value from their data and AI initiatives. Customers such as Cisco, DocuSign, Nasdaq, Pfizer, and Samsung trust Alation’s platform for self-service analytics, cloud transformation, data governance, and AI-ready data, fostering data-driven innovation at scale. Headquartered in Redwood City, California, Alation has been recognized five times by Inc. Magazine as one of the Best Workplaces. To learn more, visit www.alation.com.