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

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

The First AI Copilot for Information Groups

Generative AI modified the expertise panorama in 2023 and each knowledge group began enthusiastic about the methods during which they might use AI to develop into extra productive.

Armed with learnings from once we had been a knowledge group, 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 knowledge catalogs and knowledge 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 knowledge catalogs, main a wave of AI innovation for knowledge governance.

Make your group love documentation with Atlan AI

Within the outdated world, everybody uncared for documentation, blocking companies from trusting knowledge and making quicker, higher choices.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

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

Clarify lineage transformations with Atlan AI

Lineage simplifies transformations by taking complexity away, displaying relationships between knowledge 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 knowledge analysts and engineers perceive advanced lineage transformations by explaining what’s occurring in pure language. 

It’s not an exaggeration to say that knowledge catalogs and knowledge governance are altering without end, and for the higher, due to AI.

The Way forward for Information Governance 

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

If there was just one key takeaway from Re:Govern, it will be this: the way forward for knowledge governance will look very completely 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 knowledge contracts. And Mihir Modi (FOX) defined his imaginative and prescient for knowledge merchandise and AI in knowledge 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 direction of a future the place knowledge mesh involves life, AI is embedded in our workflows, and guide, conventional governance is automated. With that, Let’s recap 2023’s knowledge governance updates:

Convey your knowledge mesh to life with Atlan Mesh

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

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

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

Handle compliance in a single dwelling with Tag Administration

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

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

Tag Administration allows you to:

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

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

Roi Levoso Fernandez, Information Engineering Supervisor, Taxfix

Perceive influence and optimize prices with Recognition & Utilization metrics

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

In 2023, we launched Recognition & Utilization for 4 connectors — Snowflake, Databricks, Energy BI, and Redshift — giving knowledge groups the power to:

• Uncover essentially the most or least used belongings by sorting by recognition
• Perceive recognition in lineage with recognition indicators & pop-ups
• See who’s utilizing knowledge with High Customers and Current Customers
• Optimize the information property with Standard, Sluggish, and Costly queries

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

Every part downstream modified. We had been capable of see each present connection in Fivetran. We might see what was truly used. We saved these, and for all the pieces else, we might disconnect.”

David Milosevic, Head of Information & Analytics, Mistertemp

The Period of Lively Metadata

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

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

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

Influence evaluation is a tiring, time consuming, and disheartening course of for knowledge engineers. However with out it, one small change might break 1000’s of dashboards. What if influence evaluation could possibly be proactive and preventative, as a substitute of reactive and guide? Say howdy to Metadata CI/CD.

With integrations for GitHub and GitLab, Metadata CI/CD robotically surfaces impacted belongings proper within the knowledge producer workflow. This implies knowledge engineers don’t must manually verify influence and enterprise customers can belief their dashboards, which break much less usually. 

After its launch, Metadata CI/CD helped a knowledge group on Atlan understand that the request for a column title change might influence greater than 1,000 business-critical dashboards.

Atlan has been an awesome assist. We now not must depend on these paperwork, and we’re capable of do influence assessments on the click on of a button.”

Nestor Jarquin, World Information & Analytics Lead, Aliaxis

Bringing metadata to everybody’s favourite instrument: spreadsheets

There’s one knowledge instrument 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 knowledge 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 influence evaluation

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

Convey enterprise and knowledge 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 knowledge and enterprise initiatives with higher, cross-functional collaboration round knowledge. 

Atlan’s integration with Microsoft Groups allows you to:

1. Share knowledge belongings & ask knowledge questions in a Microsoft Groups channels with out leaving Atlan
2. Hyperlink crucial, 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 knowledge property and group for mission-critical knowledge initiatives, like AI fashions, wants a platform strategy to metadata. From event-driven metadata use circumstances like alerting to derived metadata use circumstances like Information as a Product scoring, knowledge groups are making the way forward for metadata come to life with this yr’s extensibility enhancements. 

In 2023, we launched the Java and Python SDKs, enabling knowledge groups to construct customized lively 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 corresponding to a “Metadata Completeness Rating” or “Information as a Product Rating” by analyzing metadata enrichment.
• Metadata migration: Mechanically migrate all of your present metadata out of your legacy knowledge 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 will let you monitor occasions occurring in Atlan, obtain notifications to a URL of your selection, and take motion instantly. For instance, you may create a webhook to ship notifications to your electronic mail tackle or collaboration app, like Slack or Microsoft Groups, when a time period is up to date or an asset is tagged. 

The probabilities are actually infinite and we’re excited to see the way forward for lively metadata, constructed not by Atlan, however by knowledge groups all over the world.

A Collaboration to Ship Trusted Information 

With each instrument within the trendy knowledge stack changing into more and more siloed, the people of information have gotten siloed as properly. 

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

This yr, 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 fallacious, enterprise stakeholders are the primary to establish knowledge points. It doesn’t must be this manner. Information high quality is a basic sign into knowledge belief, however it wants to satisfy enterprise customers the place they work, together with the fitting 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 knowledge well being, construct belief in knowledge, and help modern new methods to strategy distributed knowledge infrastructure. The native Monte Carlo integration provides you the power to:

• Uncover Monte Carlo incidents and screens in Atlan with Monte Carlo-specific filters.
• Democratize Monte Carlo’s knowledge high quality alerts wherever enterprise customers work with Atlan’s Chrome extension.
• Speed up root trigger and influence 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 knowledge incidents early on, and supply everybody with clear visibility into the present standing of information accuracy. This has been crucial for the chief group to trust we are able to ship on our promise of dependable, reliable knowledge.“

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

Soda x Atlan

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

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

BI Connectors for Enterprise Adoption 

To drive adoption of your knowledge catalog platform and knowledge 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 knowledge 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 reality for BI belongings by enabling discovery and documentation of BI belongings in Atlan.
• Allow proactive influence 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 knowledge by surfacing belief alerts from knowledge high quality, observability, and orchestration instruments. 

I’ve had not less than two conversations the place questions on downstream influence would have taken allocation of a variety of sources. Then truly getting the work performed would have taken not less than 4 to 6 weeks, however I managed to sit down alongside one other architect and resolve that inside half-hour, saying ‘In case you’re altering the column title or including an additional column, that is what it’s going to interrupt or influence.”

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 knowledge groups. In 2023, we invested in constructing native connectors to instruments that would assist reply this query: when a pipeline fails, how do you inform a enterprise consumer and assist a knowledge engineer discover the basis trigger quicker? 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, corresponding to DAGs and duties. 
• Observe and monitor your pipeline in a single dwelling with real-time operational metadata like activity run particulars and statuses. 

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

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