Thursday, December 19, 2024

AI, Information Mesh, and a New Age of Information Governance

100 new options. 20 new integrations. 2 large product launches. A primary of its form buyer convention. At Atlan, 2023 was the 12 months of constructing the long run, with information groups which can be envisioning it. And we couldn’t be extra excited to recap the 12 months, so let’s get began.

The First AI Copilot for Information Groups

Generative AI modified the expertise panorama in 2023 and each information workforce began eager about the methods through which they might use AI to turn out to be extra productive.

Armed with learnings from after we had been a knowledge workforce, we seized the chance to make the lives of people of information higher with Generative AI. In April 2023, we known as for a company-wide AI hackathon, sourcing concepts for the way forward for information catalogs and information governance. 

Two months later, in June 2023, we launched Atlan AI. By partnering with Microsoft and utilizing Azure OpenAI Service, Atlan was the primary to carry AI superpowers to information catalogs, main a wave of AI innovation for information governance.

Make your workforce love documentation with Atlan AI

Within the outdated world, everybody uncared for documentation, blocking companies from trusting information and making sooner, higher choices. Atlan AI brings an finish to the ache by auto-generating descriptions for a variety of information belongings in Atlan. All information producers need to do is evaluate, edit, and publish. 

After 6 months of testing with clients underneath a closed preview, we’ve seen Atlan AI’s description ideas shine with an acceptance fee of 60%, giving people of information extra time to work on business-critical tasks.

Clarify lineage transformations with Atlan AI

Lineage simplifies transformations by taking complexity away, exhibiting relationships between information belongings. However when a knowledge analyst needs to dive deeper into how and why a knowledge asset was remodeled, the method of parsing by way of advanced SQL queries can take hours. However not anymore.

Atlan AI helps information analysts and engineers perceive advanced lineage transformations by explaining what’s happening in pure language. 

It’s not an exaggeration to say that information catalogs and information governance are altering perpetually, and for the higher, due to AI.

The Way forward for Information Governance 

In 2023, we hosted a primary of its form group convention on fashionable information governance — Re:Govern. Practically a thousand people of information got here collectively to listen to visionary information leaders, from firms like Nasdaq, Fox, Autodesk, Elastic, and HelloFresh, discuss their methods and playbooks for contemporary information governance. 

If there was just one key takeaway from Re:Govern, it might be this: the way forward for information governance will look very totally different from its previous. 

Amy Raygada (Swiss Market Group) and Mark Kidwell (Autodesk), shared their visionary approaches to constructing a knowledge mesh. Takashi Ueki (Elastic) make clear constructing automating belief by way of information contracts. And Mihir Modi (FOX) defined his imaginative and prescient for information merchandise and AI in information governance. 

Information groups are abandoning the outdated world of guide, siloed, one-size-fits-all approaches for a brand new world the place automation & AI, collaboration, and suppleness are key to success. 

That’s why, in 2023, we began innovating in the direction of a future the place information mesh involves life, AI is embedded in our workflows, and guide, conventional governance is automated. With that, Let’s recap 2023’s information governance updates:

Carry your information mesh to life with Atlan Mesh

Atlan Mesh is the primary ever native information mesh expertise in a knowledge catalog. It’s an expertise that caters to information customers and improves their understanding of the info property. Right here’s how:

  • Information merchandise as first-class residents: Treating information as a product requires a local answer, not workarounds. Information merchandise can now be created & curated natively in Atlan, inside a brand-new residence for simple, context-rich discovery for enterprise customers.
  • Devoted areas for federated domains: With Atlan Mesh, every area will get its workforce’s personal workspace and touchdown web page to deal with curated information merchandise and documentation for information customers.
  • Enterprise lineage: Historically, lineage has been a technical device for information producers to grasp affect and discover root causes. Atlan Mesh introduces enterprise lineage for information customers, who need to perceive the provenance, not the technical structure, behind how information merchandise are created to information utilization choices. 
  • Information contracts: To help the creation of information merchandise and proactively bridge the hole between information producers and customers, we launched a brand new imaginative and prescient for information contracts in Atlan.

We’ve already began rolling out Atlan Mesh to the primary few clients, who will probably be part of the Atlan Mesh Advisory Council, and we’re excited to construct the way forward for federated, versatile information governance collectively. 

Handle compliance in a single residence with Tag Administration

As the trendy information stack continues to evolve, information groups want to make sure the correct individuals have the correct entry to the correct information. This includes figuring out delicate information and defending it with the correct entry controls, whereas serving trusted information to information customers. 

To resolve this problem, we launched Tag Administration — a brand new manner on your information workforce to handle compliance and safety — and have become one of many first Snowflake information governance companions to allow bi-directional tag sync between Snowflake and Atlan

Tag Administration lets you:

  • Create tags natively or import tags from instruments like Snowflake into Atlan
  • Classify information belongings with tags at scale utilizing Atlan’s Playbooks
  • Sync tag updates in Atlan again to information sources like Snowflake

With Atlan’s Tag Administration for Snowflake, our workforce could have one central residence to handle tags. Bi-directional tag sync will empower our information producers to tag belongings the place they work and allow our platform workforce to handle tags and permissions seamlessly.”

Roi Levoso Fernandez, Information Engineering Supervisor, Taxfix

Perceive affect and optimize prices with Reputation & Utilization metrics

As a knowledge chief, you’re all the time seeking to get probably the most out of your information, whereas controlling prices. However you want visibility into who’s truly utilizing what information through which instruments. 

In 2023, we launched Reputation & Utilization for 4 connectors — Snowflake, Databricks, Energy BI, and Redshift — giving information groups the flexibility to:

  • Uncover probably the most or least used belongings by sorting by reputation
  • Perceive reputation in lineage with reputation indicators & pop-ups
  • See who’s utilizing information with High Customers and Current Customers
  • Optimize the info property with Common, Gradual, and Costly queries

With the launch of Reputation and Utilization for Snowflake, Mistertemp, a pacesetter in recruitment and non permanent work based mostly in France, deprecated 50% of unused Snowflake tables and over 60% of their Looker belongings:

Every little thing downstream modified. We had been capable of see each current connection in Fivetran. We may see what was truly used. We saved these, and for every thing else, we might disconnect.”

David Milosevic, Head of Information & Analytics, Mistertemp

The Period of Energetic Metadata

Energetic metadata has all the time been core to Atlan’s platform, and in 2023, we noticed it changing into the middle of information estates throughout industries and companies too.

This 12 months, we had 20 new information leaders, from companies like Docker, Purple, and Datacamp,  be a part of the Energetic Metadata Pioneers membership — a visionary group that’s pushing the boundaries of metadata ahead by making energetic metadata a precedence. And to shut out the 12 months, in November 2023, G2 launched its first Energetic Metadata Grid Report, pushed by opinions from actual customers, with Atlan being the one chief within the class

With that, let’s recap 2023’s energetic metadata developments:

Don’t go breaking my coronary heart dashboards with Metadata CI/CD

Affect evaluation is a tiring, time consuming, and disheartening course of for information engineers. However with out it, one small change may break 1000’s of dashboards. What if affect evaluation might be proactive and preventative, as an alternative of reactive and guide? Say hey to Metadata CI/CD.

With integrations for GitHub and GitLab, Metadata CI/CD routinely surfaces impacted belongings proper within the information producer workflow. This implies information engineers don’t need to manually verify affect and enterprise customers can belief their dashboards, which break much less typically. 

After its launch, Metadata CI/CD helped a knowledge workforce on Atlan notice that the request for a column title change may affect greater than 1,000 business-critical dashboards.

Atlan has been a fantastic assist. We now not need to depend on these paperwork, and we’re capable of do affect assessments on the click on of a button.”

Nestor Jarquin, World Information & Analytics Lead, Aliaxis

Bringing metadata to everybody’s favourite device: spreadsheets

There’s one information device that has stood the check of time: Excel. 

In 2023, we launched and upgraded our integrations with Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets to allow new use circumstances:

  • Speed up documentation by enriching metadata at scale 

By importing information belongings from Atlan into Excel or Sheets, now you can doc descriptions, certificates, house owners, tags, and bulletins on your column belongings utilizing spreadsheet flexibility and sync the metadata updates to Atlan with a single click on.

  • Construct belief and maintain finish customers knowledgeable with affect evaluation

Now you can analyze affect sooner by importing affect evaluation right into a spreadsheet and add bulletins to maintain finish customers knowledgeable.

Carry enterprise and information collectively in Microsoft Groups 

To create true company-wide adoption, it’s essential to meet your customers the place they work. That’s why Atlan now integrates with Microsoft Groups. Now you can speed up your information and enterprise tasks with higher, cross-functional collaboration round information. 

Atlan’s integration with Microsoft Groups lets you:

  1. Share information belongings & ask information questions in a Microsoft Groups channels with out leaving Atlan
  2. Hyperlink important, context-rich Microsoft Groups threads to Atlan belongings
  3. Get notifications & alerts in chosen Microsoft Groups channels

Push the boundaries of metadata with Webhooks and new Python and Java SDKs

Getting ready your information property and workforce for mission-critical information tasks, like AI fashions, wants a platform method to metadata. From event-driven metadata use circumstances like alerting to derived metadata use circumstances like Information as a Product scoring, information groups are making the way forward for metadata come to life with this 12 months’s extensibility enhancements. 

In 2023, we launched the Java and Python SDKs, enabling information groups to construct customized energetic metadata use circumstances like:

  • Governance reporting: Measure the success your governance initiatives by automating metadata enrichment studies.
  • Customized connections: Join Atlan to your enterprise homegrown programs to allow end-to-end discovery and lineage.
  • Derived metadata: Create customized metadata similar to a “Metadata Completeness Rating” or “Information as a Product Rating” by analyzing metadata enrichment.
  • Metadata migration: Robotically migrate all of your current metadata out of your legacy information catalog to Atlan.

Together with Python and Java SDKs, we additionally launched help for Webhooks in 2023 — opening up the world of event-driven metadata use circumstances. 

Webhooks let you monitor occasions taking place in Atlan, obtain notifications to a URL of your selection, and take motion instantly. For instance, you’ll be able to create a webhook to ship notifications to your electronic mail deal with or collaboration app, like Slack or Microsoft Groups, when a time period is up to date or an asset is tagged. 

The probabilities are really limitless and we’re excited to see the way forward for energetic metadata, constructed not by Atlan, however by information groups world wide.

A Collaboration to Ship Trusted Information 

With each device within the fashionable information stack changing into more and more siloed, the people of information have gotten siloed as nicely. 

Information customers, who dwell in BI instruments, don’t have visibility into the upstream pipeline world of information producers. So when issues go flawed, they’re typically the final to know. And information producers don’t know the way their code modifications are breaking downstream dashboards. 

This 12 months, we launched native, out-of-the-box connectors for 18 new instruments, overlaying areas like Information High quality, Information Observability, Information Orchestration, and Enterprise Intelligence, to carry the world of information producers and customers nearer collectively. Let’s recap 2023’s key integrations.

All-New Partnerships with Information High quality Instruments

Practically 75% of the time, when issues go flawed, enterprise stakeholders are the primary to establish information points. It doesn’t need to be this manner. Information high quality is a elementary sign into information belief, but it surely wants to satisfy enterprise customers the place they work, together with the correct metadata context. 

That’s why, in 2023, we launched two new out-of-the-box integrations with leaders within the Information High quality and Observability market: Monte Carlo and Soda. 

Monte Carlo x Atlan

With Monte Carlo and Atlan, companies can achieve an up-to-date understanding of their information well being, construct belief in information, and help progressive new methods to method distributed information infrastructure. The native Monte Carlo integration provides you the flexibility to:

  • Uncover Monte Carlo incidents and displays in Atlan with Monte Carlo-specific filters.
  • Democratize Monte Carlo’s information high quality indicators wherever enterprise customers work with Atlan’s Chrome extension.
  • Speed up root trigger and affect evaluation by way of Monte Carlo incidents being surfaced in Atlan’s column-level lineage.

With Monte Carlo and Atlan, we are able to catch information incidents early on, and supply everybody with clear visibility into the present standing of information accuracy. This has been important for the manager workforce to believe we are able to ship on our promise of dependable, reliable information.

Michael Weiss, Senior Director of Product Administration (NAM, Information Entry and Analytics), NASDAQ

Soda x Atlan

Atlan and Soda’s native integration gives information groups with an intuitive and complete platform to seek out, belief, and use the correct information. The native Soda integration provides you the flexibility to: 

  • Uncover Soda information high quality metrics and ends in Atlan. 
  • Inform information customers of information points earlier than they make choices by highlighting Soda’s verify ends in Atlan’s Chrome extension.
  • Speed up root trigger and affect evaluation by way of Soda checks being surfaced in Atlan’s column-level lineage.

BI Connectors for Enterprise Adoption 

To drive adoption of your information catalog platform and information governance initiatives, it’s essential to meet enterprise customers the place they work: in BI instruments. In 2023, we launched native, out-of-the-box connectors for six new BI instruments to assist information groups drive company-wide adoption:

  • Sigma
  • Qlik Sense
  • Amazon Quicksight
  • MicroStrategy
  • Thoughtspot
  • Sisense

 These BI connectors allow companies to:

  • Construct a verified, single supply of fact for BI belongings by enabling discovery and documentation of BI belongings in Atlan.
  • Allow proactive affect evaluation of downstream dashboards and use circumstances by connecting BI belongings to upstream warehouse, ELT, and supply belongings with cross-system lineage.
  • Construct belief in information by surfacing belief indicators from information high quality, observability, and orchestration instruments. 

I’ve had at the very least two conversations the place questions on downstream affect would have taken allocation of numerous assets. Then truly getting the work completed would have taken at the very least 4 to 6 weeks, however I managed to take a seat alongside one other architect and remedy that inside half-hour, saying ‘For those who’re altering the column title or including an additional column, that is what it’s going to interrupt or affect.”

Karthik Ramani, World Head of Information Structure, Dr. Martens

Bringing ELT & Orchestration Context to the Enterprise

Operational metadata can carry highly effective context from pipeline processes for each enterprise customers and information groups. In 2023, we invested in constructing native connectors to instruments that might assist reply this query: when a pipeline fails, how do you inform a enterprise consumer and assist a knowledge engineer discover the basis trigger sooner? That’s why we constructed our first event-driven integration with Airflow and OpenLineage. 

Airflow x OpenLineage x Atlan

In 2023, Airflow, OpenLineage, and Atlan partnered to construct an ecosystem of belief by making real-time pipeline observability a actuality. Right here’s how:

  • Get a complete overview of your Airflow pipelines in Atlan by cataloging and documenting Airflow belongings, similar to DAGs and duties. 
  • Monitor and monitor your pipeline in a single residence with real-time operational metadata like process run particulars and statuses. 

Perceive affect of your Airflow pipelines by visualizing how Airflow DAGs and duties connect with your information belongings with cross-system lineage.


Testing Atlan? Attempt our product tour

Fascinated about information governance? Chat with our workforce about your governance initiatives and the way Atlan will help.

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