(upbeat electronic music) >> Hello, and welcome to this Cube Conversation. My name is Dave Vellante, and we're here with Raj Gossain, who's the Chief Product Officer at Alation. We have some news. Hello, Raj. Thanks for coming on. >> Dave, it's great to be with you on theCUBE again. >> Yeah, good to see you. So, okay, we're going to talk about Alation Connected Sheets. You know, what is that? Talk to us about what it is, what it does, what it brings to customers. >> So we recognize, spreadsheets are really the dark matter of the data universe. And they're used by, over 78 million people use spreadsheets on a regular basis to drive critical business analysis. But there's a lot of challenges with spreadsheet usage. It brings risk to the organization. There's no visibility into where data comes from. And so we wanted to bring the power of the Alation Data Intelligence Platform to business users where they spend most of their time. And that's in a tool that they love, and that's spreadsheets. And so we're launching a brand new product next week called Alation Connected Sheets. >> So talk more about that. So yes, I get the lineage issue, like where did-- who did this, where's this data come from? I got different data. But talk more about the problems that Alation Connected Sheets solves, specifically for customers. >> Yeah, so the big challenges that we see when we talk to data organizations is how do they understand where the data came from? Is it trusted? Is it reusable? Should it be used in this format? And if you look at where most users that use spreadsheets get the data to power their spreadsheets, maybe it's a CSV download from a database, and then you have no idea where the data came from and where it's going. Or even worse, it's copying and pasting data from other spreadsheets. And so if you take those problems, how can we bring trusted data from governed sources like Snowflake and Redshift and put it in the hands of spreadsheet users, and give them the power and flexibility of Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel, but use trusted, reliable, well-governed data so that the data office feels great about them using spreadsheets and the end users, the business users, can take advantage of the tool that they know and love and do the work that they need to do quickly. >> So, okay. So I'm inferring from your comments there that you've got the ability to take data from you mentioned a couple, Snowflake and Redshift, other popular data warehouses. >> Yep. >> So talk about the key capabilities that you have, any specific features that we should know about. >> Sure. So, we built the leading data intelligence platform and the leading data catalog. And one of the benefits of that catalog is where you have visibility into all of the trusted, governed data sources that a data organization cares about, whether it's enterprise warehouses like Snowflake or Redshift, databases like SQL Server, Google BigQuery, what have you. So what we've done is we've brought the power of that data catalog directly into both Google Sheets as well as Excel. And the idea there is a user can log into their application, authenticate to Alation using the Alation Connected Sheets plugin into their spreadsheet tool, and browse those trusted data sets that are surfaced in the Alation catalog. They get trust signals, they get visibility into where this data came from. So lineage, insights, descriptive information. And then with one or two clicks, they can choose a data set from their warehouse, basically apply filtering conditions. So let's say I'm looking for customer data in Snowflake. I can find the right customer table. If I only want it for say, 2022, I can apply some filter conditions, I can reorder columns, push one button, authenticate to that data source. We want to maintain and ensure security is being applied, so only those users that have access to the warehouse can actually download that data set. But once they've authenticated, that data gets downloaded into their spreadsheet and there's a live connection that's maintained to that spreadsheet. So anytime you need to refresh the data, one push of a button and that data set gets updated. I can schedule the updates. So, you know, if I have to produce a report every Monday morning, I could have that data set refreshed at 8:00 a.m. Monday morning, or whatever schedule the user wants. And so it gives the user the data set they need, but the data organization, they can see where that data came from and they understand the lineage of the data as it is used in analysis in those spreadsheets themselves. >> So Raj, I know you're at the Super Bowl this week, a.k.a. re:Invent. >> Yes. >> And I know you got very close relationships with Snowflake, you've mentioned them a couple times with the data summit last spring. And I know you've done some integration work with those platforms and I'm sure others. So should we think of this as you're extending that sort of trust and governance out to spreadsheets, is that right? And stretching that out? >> That's exactly right. The way we talk about it is how do we bring data intelligence to business users in the tool that they know and love, which is the spreadsheet. And so, the data catalog and data intelligence platforms in general have really primarily been focused on servicing the needs of data users: data analysts, data scientists, data engineers. But you know, our vision, our aspiration at Alation is to really bring data intelligence to any business user. And so it's a big part of our strategy to make sure that the insights from the Alation catalog and platform can find their way into tools like Excel and Google Sheets. And so that's, what you highlighted, Dave, is exactly correct. We want to maximize the likelihood that a business user can have self-service access to trusted, governed data, do the work that they need to do, and ensure that the organization has a set of data assets in spreadsheets, frankly as opposed to liabilities, which is the way most data organizations look at spreadsheets is it's almost like a risk factor. We want to convert that risk, that liability, into an asset so that people can reuse data sets and they understand where this analysis is actually coming from. >> It's something that we've talked about for well over a decade on theCUBE. Is data an asset or is it a liability? >> Yeah, yeah. >> You obviously want to get value out of it, but if you can't share it, it's not trusted. So what people do is they lock it down and then that constricts value creation. >> Exactly. >> My understanding is this tech came out of an acquisition from a company, Kloudio. >> That's correct. >> Tell us about Kloudio. Why Kloudio? What's the fit there? >> Yeah, so Kloudio is a company, it's about five years old. We closed the acquisition of the company in March of this past year. And they had about 20 customers, 10 engineers. And we saw an opportunity with the spreadsheet tool that they'd created to really compliment our data intelligence strategy. And as you said, Dave, extend the value of data intelligence to business users. And so, we brought the Kloudio team into the fold. The thing I'm most excited about as a product guy, is within seven months of them joining Alation, we're actually shipping a brand new product that's going to drive revenue and meet the needs of tens of millions of users, ultimately. Like that's really our aspiration. And so, the tech they had was extremely modern. It reinforces the platform position that we have. You know, this microservices architecture that we've built Alation around, made it easy for that new team to come in and leverage existing APIs and capabilities from our platform and the tech that they brought into Alation to essentially connect the dots and deliver a brand new set of capabilities to an entirely new audience, to help our customers achieve their business objectives, which is really creating a data culture across their entire organization, inclusive of business users, not just, like I said, the data X users that are already taking advantage of solutions like Alation and cloud warehouses, et cetera. >> So I have two questions, follow up questions by me, and I think you might have answered the second one. The first one is what's the secret sauce behind Kloudio? How does the tech work? The second question is how does it fit into the Alation portfolio? How were you able to integrate it so quickly? Maybe that's the microservices architecture. But start with the secret sauce. What is it, what can you share with me? >> I think the thing that we saw with Kloudio that got us excited, and the fact that they, even though it was a small company, they had 20 customers, they were generating revenue, and they were delivering real value to business users, by really enabling business users to tap into the value of trusted, governed data, and frankly, get IT out of the way. You know, we almost refer to it as like smart self-service, which is, they could find a data asset and connect to that source, and just with a couple quick clicks, almost a low-code, no-code type of an experience, bring that sort of data into their spreadsheet so they could do the work that they needed to do. That opportunity, that tech that the Kloudio team had built out, the big gap that they had is, my goodness, what does it take to actually be aware of all the data sources that exist across an organization and connect to them? And that's what Alation does, right? That's why we built the platform that we built, so that we can basically understand all of a customer's data assets, whether they're on-prem or in the cloud. And so it was a little bit of, you know, that Reese's Peanut Butter Cup analogy. The chocolate and the peanut butter coming together. The Alation platform, the Alation catalog, coupled with the technology that Kloudio brought to us really was sort of a match made in heaven. And it's allowed us to bring this new capability to market that really is value-add on top of the platform and catalog investments that our customers have already made. >> Yeah, so they had this magic pixie dust, but it was sort of isolated, and then you've integrated it into your catalog. And that's the second part of my question. How were you able to do that so quickly? >> So, we've been on this evolution, enhancing the the Alation data intelligence platform. We've moved to a microservices architecture, we're fully multi-tenant in the cloud. And the fact that we'd made those investments over the past few years gave us the opportunity to make it easy for an acquired business like Kloudio, or you know, perhaps a future acquisition, or third party developers leveraging APIs that we expose to make it easy for them to integrate into the Alation platform. And so, I think it's a bit of foresight. We recognize that in starting with the catalog, the opportunity was much bigger than just providing a data catalog. We've added data governance, we've built out this platform and we recognize that more and more users can and should be benefiting from data intelligence. And so I think those platform investments have paid significant dividends and accelerated our ability to deliver Alation Connected Sheets as quickly as we have. >> Sounds like a great acquisition, like a diamond in the rough. I mean, I love big these big mega acquisitions 'cause the media company can write about 'em, but I really love the high, high return. You know, low denominator, high value. So, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Where can people learn more about this? Maybe play around a little bit with it? >> Yeah, so we're going to be demoing Alation Connected Sheets at AWS re:Invent next week. And it's going to be available starting next week, so the 28th of November. And obviously you'll see it online, on social media, on our website as well. But folks that are going to be in Las Vegas next week, come to the Alation booth and you'll get a chance to see it directly. >> Awesome. Okay, Raj. Hey, thanks for spending some time with us today. Really appreciate it. >> Great, thanks so much, Dave. Great to see you. >> Hey, you're very welcome. And thank you for watching. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>>Hey everyone. Welcome to this cube conversation. I'm your host, Lisa Martin Rajko same joins me now the chief product officer at elation. Raj. Great to have you on the cube. Welcome. >>It's great to be here, Lisa. And I've been a fan for a while and excited to have a chance to talk with you live. >>And we've got some exciting stuff to talk about elation in terms of the success in the enterprise market. I see more than 25% of the fortune 100 doing great. There is customers elation and snowflake. Before we get into your exciting news. Talk to me a little bit about the evolution of the partnership. >>Yeah, no, absolutely. So, you know, we've always been a, a close partner and integrator with snowflake and last year snowflake became an investor in elation and they participated in our series D round. And the thing I'm most excited about beyond that is we were announced in the snowflake summit back in June to be their data governance partner of the year for the second year running. And so we've always had a closer relationship with snowflake, both at the go to market level and at the product level. And you know, the stuff that we're about to talk about is a Testament to that. >>Absolutely. It is. So talk to us before we get into the announcement. What you're seeing in the market as organizations are really becoming much more serious about being data driven and building a data culture. What are you seeing with respect to enterprises as well as those smaller folks? >>Yeah, no, it, it, it's, it's a great question. I mean, you, you hear the T tropes data is the new oil data is like water it's essential. And we're seeing that very consistently across every customer, every segment, every geo that we, that we talk to, I, I think the challenges that organizations are seeing that are leading to the amazing growth that we've seen at elation are there's so much data. They don't know where it resides. You've got silos or islands of knowledge that exist across the, the enterprise. And they need a data intelligence platform to bring it all together, to help them make sense of it and ultimately build a data culture that, you know, it lets their employees make data driven decisions as opposed to relying on gut. And so those are some of the macro trends that we're seeing and with the migration of data to the cloud and in particular snowflake, it seemed like a huge opportunity for us to partner even more closely with, with snowflake. And we're, we're excited about the progress that we've seen with them thus far. >>All right, let's get right into it. So first of all, define a data culture and then talk to us about how elation and snowflake are helping organizations to really achieve that. >>Yeah. You know, it, it's interesting. The, the company vision that we have at elation is to empower a curious and rational world. And you know, what that really means is we want to deliver solutions that drive curiosity and drive rational behavior. So making, making decisions based on data and insights, as opposed to gut, or, you know, the, the highest paid, you know, person's opinion or what have you. And so delivering a data culture, building a data culture, which is something we hear from all the CDOs that we talk to is, Hey, elation, help us drive data literacy across the organization, provide that single source of reference. So if anybody has a question about, do we have data that answers this, or, you know, what kind of performance are we seeing in this product area? Give me a starting point for my data exploration journey. And that's really where elation and our data intelligence solutions kind of come into the play. >>So unpack elation cloud service for snowflake. Talk to us about what it is, why you're doing it, what the significance of this partnership and this solution is delivering. >>Absolutely. So the elation cloud service for snowflake is a brand new offering that we just brought to market. And the intent really was, you know, we've had massive success in the global 2000. You mentioned the, the progress that we've had with fortune 100 customers, we see the need for data, culture, and data literacy and governance in organizations, you know, that are massive global multinational enterprises all the way down to divisions of an organization, or even, you know, mid-market and SMB companies. And so we thought there was a huge opportunity to really drive data culture for those organizations that are adopting snowflake, but still need that data intelligence overlay across the, the data that's in the snowflake cloud. And so what we did is we launched the elation cloud service for snowflake as a free trial, and then, you know, low cost purchase solution that, you know, can be adopted for less than a hundred thousand dollars a year. >>Got it. So tar from a target market perspective that lower end of the market for, of course, you know, these days, Raj, as we talk about every company, regardless of size, regardless of industry and location has to be a data company getting there and, and, and, and really defining and going on a journey to get there is really complex. So you're going now down market to meet those customers where they are, how will elation cloud service for snowflake help those customers, those smaller customers really become data driven and, and, and adopt a data culture. >>Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a great question. I, I think the biggest goal that we had was making it really simple and easy for them to begin this journey. So, you know, we are now live in the snowflake partner connect portal. And if someone wants to experience the power of elation cloud service for snowflake, they just need to go to that portal, click the elation tile. And literally within less than two minutes, a brand new instance of elation is spun up. Their snowflake data is automatically being cataloged as part of this trial. And they have 14 days to go through this experience and, and get a sense of the power of elation to give them insights into what's in their snowflake platform, what governance options they can layer on top of their snowflake data cloud and how the data is transforming across their organization. >>So talk to me about who you're talking to within a customer. I was looking at some data that elation provided to me, and I see that according to Gartner data culture is priority number one for chief data officers, but for those smaller organizations, do they have chief data officers? Is that responsibility line still with the CIO? Who are you engaging with? >>Yeah, it's very, very, really great question. I, I think the larger organizations that we sell to definitely have a, a CDO and, you know, CDO sometimes is the chief data and analytics officer in smaller organizations, or even in divisions of big companies that, that, you know, might be target customers for ACS, for snowflake could be a, a VP of analytics could be head of marketing. Operations could be a data engineering function, so that might roll up into the it. And so I think that's, what's interesting is we, we wanted to take the friction out of the, the experience process and the trial process, and whoever is responsible for the snowflake instance and, and leveraging snowflake for, for data and analytics, they can explore and understand what the, a power elation layered on top of snowflake can provide for them. >>Okay. So another, another thing that I uncovered in researching for this segment is McKenzie says data, culture is decision culture. I thought that was a really profound statement, but it's also such a challenge to get there is organizations of all sizes are on various points in their journey to become data driven. What does that mean? How, how well, how do elation and help customers really achieve that data culture so that they can really have that decision culture so they can make faster, better data based decisions? >>Yeah, it, so I, I think a huge part of it, like if we think about our, our, our big area of focus, how do we enable users to find, understand trust, govern, and use data within snowflake in this instance? And so step one to drive data culture is how, how do you provide a single source of reference a, a, a search box, frankly, you know, Google for your, for your data environment, so that you can actually find data, then how do you understand it? You know, what's in there. What does it mean? What are the relationships between these data objects? Can I trust this? Is this sandbox data, or is this production data that can be used for reporting and analytics? How do I govern the data? So I know who's using it, who should use it, what policies are there. And so if, if we go through the set of features that we've built into ation cloud service for snowflake, it enables us to deliver on that promise result at the very end, resulting in the ability to explore the data that exists in the snowflake platform as well. >>Let's go ahead and unpack that. Now, talk to me about some of the key capabilities of the solution and what it's enabling organizations to achieve. >>Yeah, so, you know, it starts with cataloging the data itself. You know, we, we, we are the data catalog company. We basically define that category. And so step one is how do we connect to snowflake and automatically ingest all the metadata that exists within that snowflake cloud, as well as extract the lineage relationships between tables. So you can understand how the data is transforming within the snowflake data cloud. And so that provides visibility to, to begin that fine journey. You know, how, how do I actually discover data on the understand and trust front? I think where things get really interesting is we've integrated deeply with Snowflake's new data governance features. So they've got data policies that provide things like row level security and, and data masking. We integrate directly with those policies, extract them, ingest them into elation so that they can be discovered, can be easily applied or added to other data sets within snowflake directly from the elation UI. >>So now you've got policies layered on top of your data environment. Snowflake's introduced, tagging and classification capabilities. We automatically extract and ingest those tags. They're surfaced in inhalation. So if somebody looks for a data set that they're not familiar with, they can see, oh, here are the policies that this data set is applied to. Here are the tags that are applied. And so snow elation actually becomes almost like a user interface to the data that exists within that snowflake platform. And then maybe just two other things with the lineage that we extract. One of the most important things that you can deliver for users is impact analysis. Hey, if I'm gonna deprecate this table, or if I'm gonna make a change to what this table definition is, what are the downstream objects and users that should know about that? So, Hey, if this table's going away and my Tableau report over here is gonna stop working, boy, it'd be great to be able to get visibility into that before that change is made, we can do that automatically within the elation UI and, and really just make it easier for somebody to govern and manage the data that exists within the snowflake data cloud. >>So easier to govern and manage the data. Let's go up a level or two. Sure. Talk to me about some of the business outcomes that this solution is gonna help organizations to achieve. We talked about every company these days has to be a data company. Consumers expect this very personalized, relevant experience. What are you thinking? Some of the outcomes are gonna be that this technology and this partnership is gonna unlock. >>Yeah, no, I, I, I think step one, and this has always been a huge area of focus for us is just simply driving business productivity. So, you know, the, the data that we see in talking to CDOs and CDOs is the onboarding and, and getting productive the time it takes to onboard and, and get a data analyst productive. It, it can be nine to 12 months. And, you know, we all know the battle for talent these days is significant. And so if we can provide a solution, and this is exactly what we do that enables an organization to get a data analyst productive in weeks instead of months, or, or, you know, potentially even a year, the value that that analyst can deliver to the organization goes up dramatically because they're spending less time looking for data and figuring out who knows what about the data. >>They can go to elation, get those insights and start answering business questions, as opposed to trying to wrangle or figure out does the data exist. And, and, and where does it exist? So that's, that's one key dimension. I'd say the other one that, that I'd highlight is just being able to have a governance program that is monitored managed and well understood. So that, you know, whether it's dealing with CCPA or GDPR, you know, some of the regulatory regimes, the, the ability for an organization to feel like they have control over their data, and they understand where it is who's using it and how it's being used. Those are hugely important business outcomes that CIOs and CDOs tell us they need. And that's why we built the lation cloud service for snowflake >>On the first front. One of the things that popped into my mind in terms of really enabling workforce productivity, workforce efficiency, getting analysts ramped up dramatically faster also seems to me to be something that your customers can leverage from a talent attraction and retention perspective, which in today's market is critical. >>I, I so glad you mentioned that that's, that's actually one of the key pillars that we highlight as well is like, if you give great tools to employees, they're gonna be happier. And, and you'll be a, a preferred employer and people are gonna feel like, oh, this is an organization that I wanna work at because they're making my job easier and they're making it easier for me to deliver value and be productive to the organization. And that's, it's absolutely critical this, this, this war for talent that everybody talks about. It's real and great self-service tools that are empowering to employees are the things that are gonna differentiate companies and allow them to, to unleash the power of data, >>Unleash the power of data, really use it to the competitive advantage that it can and should be used for. When we look at, when you look at customers that are on that journey, that data catalog journey, they, you probably see such a variety of, of locations about where they are in that journey. Do you see a common thread when you're in customer conversations? Is there kind of a common denominator that you, you speak to where you, you really know elation and snowflake here is absolutely the right thing. >>Yeah, no, it, it, it's a good question. I would actually say the fact that a customer is on snowflake. I they're already, you know, a step up on that maturity curve. You know, one of the big use cases that we see with customers that is, is leading to the need for data intelligence solutions that, you know, like that elation can deliver is digital transformation and, and, and cloud migration, you know, we've got legacy data. On-prem, we know we need to move to the cloud to get better agility, better scaling, you know, perhaps, you know, reduced costs, et cetera. And so I think step one, on that, that qualification criteria or that maturity journey is, Hey, if you're already in snowflake, that's a great sign because you're, you're recognizing the power of a data cloud platform and, and, and warehouse like snowflake. And so that's a, a, a great signal to us that this is a customer that wants to, you know, really better understand how they can get value out of, out of their solution. I think the next step on that journey is a recognition that they're not utilizing the data that they have as effectively as they can and should be, and they're not, and, and their employees are still struggling with, you know, where does the data exist? Can I trust it? It, you know, it, who do I know tends to be more important than do I have a tool that will help me understand the data. And so customers that are asking those sorts of questions are ideal customers for the elation cloud service for snowflake solution. >>So enabling those customers to get their hands on it, there's a free trial. Talk to us about that. And where can the audience go to actually click and try? >>Absolutely. So, you know, we'll, we'll be doing our usual marketing and, and promotion of this, but what I'm super excited about, you know, again, I mentioned earlier, you know, this is part of our, our cloud native multi 10 and architecture. We are live in the snowflake partner connect portal. And so if you are logged into snowflake and are an admin, you can go to the partner connect portal and you will see a tile. I think it's alphabetically, sorted and elation starts with a so pretty easy to find. I don't think you'll have to do too much searching. And literally all you have to do is click on that tile, answer a couple quick questions. And in the background in about two minutes, your elation instance will get spun up. We'll we will have sample data sets in there. There's some guided tours that you can walk through to kind of get a feel for the power of snowflake. >>So policy center lineage, you know, tags, our intelligent SQL tool that allows you to smartly query the snowflake data cloud and publish queries, share queries with others, collaborate on them for, for greater insights. And there's, you know, as you would expect with any, you know, online free trial, you know, we've got a built in chat bot. So if you have a question, wanna get a better sense of how a particular feature works or curious about how elation might work. In other areas, you can, you know, ask a question to the chat bot and we've got product specialists on the back end that can answer questions. So we really wanna make that journey as, as seamless and easy as, as possible. And hopefully that results in enough interests that the customer wants to, to, or the, the trial user wants to become a customer. And, and that's where our great sales organization will kind of take the Baton from there. >>And there's the, there's the objective there, and I'm sure Raj folks can find out about the free trial and access it. You, you mentioned through the marketplace, more information on elian.com. I imagine they can go there to access it as well, >>A hundred percent elation.com. We're on Twitter, we're on LinkedIn, but yeah, if you have any questions, you know, you can just search for elation cloud service for snowflake, or just go to the elation.com website. Absolutely. >>All right. Elation cloud service for snowflake. Congratulations on the launch to you and the entire elation team. We look forward to hearing customer success stories and really seeing those business outcomes realize in the next few months, Raj, thanks so much for your time. >>Thank you so much, Lisa. It's great to talk to you. >>Likewise, Raj gin. I'm Lisa Martin. Thank you for watching this cube conversation. Stay right here for more great action on the cube, the leader in live tech coverage.