Press Release • September 25, 2015

Alation Partners with Cloudera to Provide Data Catalog Designed for Data Analysts

Combination of Alation and Cloudera Lowers the Barrier to Data Access on Hadoop; Provides Single, Central Data Catalog for Analysts Working Across Big Data Systems

cREDWOOD CITY, Calif. and PALO ALTO, Calif. – Sept. 29, 2015 – Alation, the data intelligence company, today announced the certification of the Alation platform with Cloudera Enterprise, an enterprise analytic data management platform powered by Apache Hadoop™.

Today, data analysts who know SQL often struggle with finding and understanding data in Hadoop. The certification of Alation and Cloudera provides a single, central data catalog with embedded search, query and collaboration tools for working across big data systems, including databases and Hadoop. The combination of Alation and Cloudera enable analysts to increase their productivity and uncover data insights faster.

With today’s news, Alation is certified with both Cloudera Impala, a purpose-built, state-of-the-art analytic database architected specifically to leverage the flexibility and scalability of Hadoop for providing interactive business intelligence and data discovery, and Apache Hive™, an open source project under the Apache Software Foundation for analysts to access SQL.

In addition to natively connecting to both Impala and Hive, Alation also surfaces information from raw HDFS files in the Alation data catalog, enabling Alation’s collaborative data platform to provide end-to-end lineage from raw data ingestion through query processing. The result is comprehensive analyst visibility and access to data stored in Cloudera Enterprise. Benefits of Alation’s integration with Cloudera Enterprise include:

  • Increased accessibility of Hadoop for data analysts and analytics teams that now have actionable access to an automated and up-to-date catalog of HDFS files, Hive tables and Impala queries.

  • Faster discovery of data with the Alation data search interface that surfaces results based on observed data usage in addition to typical search criteria matches.

  • Improved analyst collaboration on Hadoop with tools for sharing, auditing and commenting on queries that run in Impala or against Hive tables.

“Alation enables Cloudera users to more easily access the data stored in an enterprise data hub by surfacing data suggestions within their natural workflow and providing a launching point for interactive queries through Impala and Hive,” said Tim Stevens, vice president, Business and Corporate Development at Cloudera. “Providing Cloudera users with a data catalog enables them to glean data insights and make data driven decisions faster.”

“The partnership between Cloudera, a leader in enterprise analytic data management powered by Hadoop, and Alation, which was founded on the mission of empowering every user to become data-driven, lowers the barrier to data access on Hadoop file system,” said Venky Ganti, co-founder and chief technology officer at Alation. “That means organizations can move faster in meeting one of their highest-priority objectives – gaining value from their data.”

Alation’s collaborative data platform combines the power of machine learning with human insight to centralize an organization’s knowledge of data — automatically capturing information on what the data describes, where the data comes from, who’s using it and how it’s used. This allows stakeholders across organizations to share knowledge, exchange ideas and quickly find the answers they need.

About Alation

Alation is the leader in enterprise data intelligence solutions, enabling self-service analytics, cloud transformation, and data governance. More than 550 enterprises build data culture and improve data-driven decision-making with Alation, including Cisco, Nasdaq, Pfizer, Salesforce, and Virgin Australia. Alation has been named to Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces list four times, is a 2022 UK’s Best Workplaces™ in tech and Best Workplaces™ for Women, and recognized as a 2022 and 2023 UK’s Best Workplaces™. For more information, visit www.alation.com.

Alation Media Contact

Lauren Lloyd

Director of Public Relations

lauren.lloyd@alation.com541-490-6115