Alation and First San Francisco Partners Link Up to Deliver Best Practices for Modernizing Data Governance with Data Catalogs

Alation and First San Francisco Partners today announced a strategic partnership to meet the needs of chief data officers seeking to bring trust to data-driven decisions. The partnership focuses on delivering new, field-tested methodologies for agile and modern data governance, made possible by data catalog technology.

“The immense supply of data combined with the demand driven by AI and self-service analytics has disrupted traditional governance models. Traditional top-down workflow driven governance can no longer cope with the volume of data and the complexity of use. Customers require more agile and modern approaches to data governance. With the Alation Data Catalog and the introduction of TrustCheck, data teams apply policies to massive volumes of data and guide behavior in real-time,” said Satyen Sangani, CEO of Alation. “Our partnership with First San Francisco Partners leverages some of the most trusted thought leaders in the industry to redefine data governance processes in an agile way, empowered by the advanced capabilities of a data catalog.”

The partnership between Alation and First San Francisco Partners represents a commitment to providing data and analytics leaders, including CDOs, with field-tested best practices that incorporate data cataloging into holistic data governance practices. The first generally available methodology from the two companies will focus on building governed practices for agile data acquisition in the enterprise, followed by a second offering focusing on data stewardship for the optimized use of data.

“The role of the CDO has never been more complex nor more important to the goals of the business. As organizations look to leverage the business value of data across the information supply chain, governing metadata and data catalogs are becoming more pivotal to the success of analytics programs,” said Kelle O’Neal, CEO and founder of First San Francisco Partners. “As the pioneers of the data catalog market, we’re excited to partner with Alation to provide CDOs with the methodologies needed to power an agile approach to governance.”

First San Francisco Partners brings together some of the leading minds in data governance, including Kelle O’Neal and Malcolm Chisholm.

“With data taking an increasingly prominent role in business strategy, there is a growing tension between how data is architected and what the business needs to execute on strategy. With data catalogs, we are at the point where we can reach enterprise-wide data literacy and create new approaches to data governance that open the doors to the democratization of data,” said Chisholm, who is CIO at First San Francisco Partners. “That’s why we’re working with Alation to help CDOs address the unique challenges presented by self-service.”

The partnership comes on the heels of the release of Alation TrustCheck, a new set of features delivering agile stewardship by embedding best practices and compliance rules right into the workflow of data consumers. TrustCheck integrates directly with third-party business intelligence tools through native APIs and is immediately available through Alation Compose, Tableau Server and Salesforce Einstein Analytics. The partnership will ensure Alation customers can implement TrustCheck in the context of a complete corporate governance strategy.