What are the signs of an existing Data Catalog failing

Moderator

0:05 What are those signs that something isn't working or we need something new, or what is the big push that says we need to make a switch to a new technology? Is it a, you know, just going through a new plan? Is it lack of adoption in the other tool? Walk us through that. How do you even get to implementing something like a modern data catalog?

Danrlei Alves

0:24 Well, for us, it's hard to say. I think it was a, a lot of small problems adding up until the point where eventually it, it got to the point where it was unsustainable to stay with, with the previous solution. And for us, the, the journey was... Well, at first we acquired the, the previous solution. We started working on it. We had a whole bunch of expectancies towards it, what we were gonna be able to do, the features we were gonna have at our disposal, and the results we wanted to achieve with that. And what happened was that over time, we started stumbling upon issues here and there. We weren't able to implement some features.

1:07 We received feedback from our users, and it wasn't the best feedback in terms of user interface or the user experience with this, with the solution. These kind of issues, over time, they kind of add up, and it came to a point where we felt like we weren't able to get to where we wanted to. And one of the main reasons was the solution we had at our disposal to use. In my perception whatever tool or tools you choose, they're kind of gonna be the cornerstone of whatever data governance framework we're gonna implement. So you're gonna need them, and they're gonna help you to get wherever you wanna be, to implement the strategy you have defined.

1:48 And when you start feeling that the solution you have at our disposal it is not helping you to be where you wanna be, and then you ask your vendor for help and the support from your vendor is also not able to help you. So I, I think at the end of the day, that was what made us look for solutions elsewhere.

Moderator

2:06 Gotcha. Yeah, so it's, I mean, there's, there's kind of the objective, does it have the features that we need? But then there's also the, like your data governance strategy changes probably incrementally, right? You know, throughout the year, annually, something like that. So you need something that can adapt as your strategy changes. You know, technology's an enabler, but I think it's more about where's the organization going with governance. Joe, similar question. I mean, what were some of the pain points that you were recognizing or maybe gaps in a previous solution that make you go from kind of a legacy tool to, "Hey, how do we move into this modern data governance world?"

Joseph Stritesky

2:43 Yeah, similar to Daniel, too, when he was talking about, like, the interface. Our previous tool, the feedback that we did get that it wasn't very user-friendly, so people would only go into the tool when they absolutely needed to. So, so we were paying for this tool that not everyone was utilizing just because to train someone or to give someone access to it, it was not a very formal process. So when we started, we had just began looking for a new solution. So I will say that since onboarding users, we've been getting great feedback from it.

3:22 So one of the features that a lot of our users have said that they like are the help, help videos on Atlan. So they have like a big list of how do you query data, how do you search assets. So users really like that interface where our previous one didn't have those features, so.

Moderator

3:41 Was it. Were there particular personas? I think what I see in a lot of organizations that have legacy catalogs is, like, data engineers might use it for something, but the business doesn't know it exists or, or vice versa, right? There's like a, a glossary that the business uses, but it's not connected to any of the physical assets. I mean, was that either/or a scenario or which one or?

Joseph Stritesky

4:05 Yeah. So previous catalog, we didn't have personas, so every user could query any data. They could search any data, edit data. So with our, with Atlan now, we can set the personas to only users can query. If you can query, you can only query certain assets. So being able to really add that extra security feature in the data, being able to set those permissions and personas to the very specific users was a big plus that we saw when joining Atlan, so.

Moderator

4:39 Awesome. Yeah. I definitely wanna double-click on who was using Atlan. Who do you roll this out to first? But Nathalie, similar question. I mean, HelloFresh going through, you know, I'd say a data governance journey, what are some of the pain points that you recognize and, you know, what was that tipping point of, you know, we should probably look at something else or, you know— Yeah.

Natalie Hallak

5:00 For us... Yeah, for us, the biggest pain point was to have a very good understanding of our data landscape, right? So as an organization, we, we grew our tech stack, so it became a lot more innovative. And to have a very good understanding of the data lineage from the operational all the way to your dashboard was something that was very important for us, right? So but not only from the data lineage in terms from, like, the start to the end, but what happens if I'm a data producer that owns an asset and I make any changes, what's the impact on my downstream consumer? Right?

5:39 So having that view end-to-end was something that was very important that we didn't really have in our previous data catalog. And this was quite key for us. Of course, on top of what Joe and Dan said around the user, like the UI was very, is very user-friendly, but yeah, the data lineage was a big decision in terms of switching to Atlan.