 Hello, welcome to this special CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here at Palo Alto, California. We're here coming in remote today, Saheed, CTO, Adolation, company we've been following since the beginning, Big News Day, Event in London, big announcement. Obviously not surprised to see AI involved in a company that's been doing democratizing data and making it easier to use for engineers and data analysts and data stewards over the past decade. Great to have you on. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, John. Nice to be here. It's been great following the rise of Elation. Again, the trend is your friend. And when you had it early and you see it and then AI is the gift that dropped into the industry, we're seeing in the CUBE's reporting, of course, looking at angles, got tons of stories on it. AI is on everyone's agenda, from the bottoms-up developers to the top-down boardroom, into the organization. It's the hottest thing. And if you have data, it's the new value proposition. It's the new intellectual property. That's the conversation. So that's awesome. And you guys have news. You're launching the ALI AI, AI-powered co-pilot for AI engineers and data science analysts and data stewards. I think one of the data is pretty much everybody these days. So let's get into the news. Take us through what is the AI product that you're announcing? What is ALI? So ALI is a co-pilot that increases productivity by enabling all the way from data scientists to data analysts to executives also. It's got three things. It's got intelligent curation. So users can really accelerate the setup of their data catalog. It actually takes a lot of human effort to set up the catalog. But now with some of the intelligent curation features and stewards suggestions and the AI recommendation system that we have, we can actually automatically suggest who'd be the best data steward for a particular data asset. What should be the description for that data asset? What should be the title for that data asset? Obviously the human's still in the loop. The steward still gets to approve those things, but we're helping the steward, right? We're doing most of that hard work for them. Intelligent search, big use case for a product like Alation, a data intelligence product is so that people can easily find and understand the data. And we've historically, as has the industry, relied on keyword-based search. So we are now relying on semantic search, right? Where we are understanding the semantics of the data and tuning our search to that. And that really helps the analysts, the data stewards, the executives really get to the data even quicker. And the third piece is a SQL co-pilot, the order-generated SQL, where Ali AI essentially generates SQL based on natural language, right? So a person, an executive, for example, can ask a question in natural language. And we then, behind the scenes, Ali SQL generates SQL, converts that into SQL, runs the query and spits out the answer. Alation's been solving a lot of problems for customers for years. And again, we point that at the top. What challenges specifically does the AI piece solve, the Ali AI solve? What's the main problem statement or problems or opportunities that emerge from where AI can enable new change or new value? What's the main, the problem that you guys are hitting here for customers and the challenge? I think, you know, just getting them to value quicker, getting them to getting live with their data culture, data literacy programs quicker. The other thing that when we talk to our customers, you know, they basically say that, look, everyone from the boardroom, two individual contributors really wants to harness the power of AI. And in order to do that, they need data. And in order to, and a lot of data, and not just a lot of data, they need trusted data. You cannot have trusted AI without trusted data, right? So they are really looking for us to be that foundation, to help them build a regular, consistent supply of trusted data. It's interesting, people who have had good data practices and initiatives are actually well positioned for the AI wave. And as a CTO, I want to get your thoughts because, you know, I've had many conversations with the nation over the decade. You guys have been talking about machine learning, supervised, unsupervised machine learning. And now AI comes in with foundational models, the generative AI pieces here. What was it like? What was the conversations like for you in the company when you say, okay, this is going to be great for us. And take us through how that evolved for Elation as a company because it's not like you guys just jumped on the bandwagon. You guys had the discipline. You have customers putting in a lot of compliance. And a lot of that hard work pays off what scale with AI. So this is a nuanced conversation, but the folks who are putting in the, I won't say labeling because it's not labeling, but like doing the compliance right, getting it right, are positioned better. Does this make the AI work better? Take us through your thoughts at CTO. What's going on here with the data piece of it and how customers are going to leverage the AI? Absolutely, John. First of all, I want to thank you for recognizing that we've just not jumped on the bandwagon, that we've been doing AI. You get proof. We have videos. Yeah, since our inception, right? So, you know, we were actually known as the machine learning data catalog. So I think it's been fascinating, right? I mean, I think for us, you know, the initial conversations, especially when, you know, Chad GPD came around. We had a lot of our customers calling us. And the initial conversations were like, hey, how are you going to leverage it? How are you going to make your product better, right? Like what automation are you going to deliver, right? And the things that I talked about, right? Intelligent curation, intelligent search or the generated SQL. So they were very keen on understanding how we could deliver value to them faster and more automatically and reduce a barrier to entry to a product. But then over time, what we've seen is people have realized that our customers have realized that, you know, they are going to be AI companies. Ultimately, that is going to be how they're going to differentiate themselves. And in order for them to be an AI company, they're like, yeah, I want your, you know, I want all your great features, but what I really want you to help me with is build this consistent, regular supply of trusted data. And, you know, the capabilities that you have provided to me, because they use us to catalog and govern their analytical data state. They're like, I want you to govern my AI data state now. I want you to govern my models. I want you to govern the pipelines that are feeding it. I want you to govern the training data that's, you know, feeding my models. I want you to, you know, do all of it. And I think that's where most of the interest is these days. And again, I can't tell you, I think I have at least three to four conversations with customers on this particular topic every week. This is a big challenge. I have to ask you, zooming out, discovering trusted data is a challenge. It's going to get worse. More data is coming in than ever before. Budgets aren't increasing at the speed of the data. What do your customers need to do to be ready for AI? I mean, is there a playbook that you're recommending? What's the pattern? Is it a technical challenge? Is it a personnel challenge? Is it a process challenge? What is the core opportunity for customers and what's your advice? I think it's all of the above, right? It is a process, people, and a technology challenge. And frankly, with AI, the bar in terms of your practices around managing your data is even higher now. Because, you know, if you are going to rely on AI to give you great decisions, then you've got to give it really good, trusted data. So I think my first, you know, when anyone, when any of our customers comes to me, my first piece of advice is this is real. I've been around in the technology industry for a while. So it's not a fad. This is here to say, stay legit. It's legit, absolutely legit. Please take it seriously. And if you haven't started, start immediately. So that's number one. And number two, you know, get the fundamentals right. Get the basics right. Don't, you know, get fascinated by the next great model. Get the quality of your data right. Get your pipelines, data pipelines that are feeding you to these models right. Get, you know, higher good people. Get the right talent in. And then I think, you know, get your governance processes in place. So here's some things I like. I want to get your quick reaction as we wrap up and then talk about the event. It automates documentation and curations data, of a data asset scale. Check, that's awesome. Low hanging fruit, major benefit. Accelerates the population of data catalogs by suggesting data stewards. That's, it's like matchmaking. I like that too. That's more of a operational benefit. Also scales up better data. The search thing I find interesting in the SQL auto generation, I think fascinating. I think that's to me, a big deal. And then of course, getting the in-depth data and not having the in-depth requirements to be a great person to use data to solve problems. Those are the features. Which one do you like best? Which one's the most important? Is it the search and the SQL auto generation? If you had to kind of look at those bullets in the release, which one jumps out? How would you stack rank the storage line here? You know, that's a tough question. That's not a prayer question I'm going to say. It's like picking between your children. If I had to pick one, I'd go with search. I think search is my favorite. I think, you know, look enterprise data, you know, you have columns that are, especially, you know, if a technical person has created the, you know, those columns or table names or what have you, I mean, they are really arcane. So, you know, our ability to actually look into the data and look and figure out the semantics of, you know, what the person is trying to look for. I actually use it quite a bit, you know, in our implementation of our product. And I'll tell you, I can find data, I'm at least twice as productive if not more. I think that's, I think the search is the game changer. They're all amazing. I mean, this is where the AI is going to shine. Final question, let's talk about this London event because what you're getting at here is the vision of an AI system, right? This is not just about compliance and governance. This is about the operating system of a company. Is this being talked about at the event? What's the revelation London conversation like? What's the reaction from customers on the news? Share your thoughts and what are you hearing? It's a great event. It's amazing to meet with customers. It's amazing to meet with people that are actually using your product and get their feedback. We've got product leaders from, you know, all over Europe here. And, you know, we've got like 30 sessions. We've got speakers obviously from Malaysian but we've got speakers more importantly from our customers. They have exclusive access to pre-conference training certification. We have some hands-on labs and then obviously we're going to be talking about our roadmap, especially our AI roadmap. So it's super exciting. And, you know, we have one in London, we kick things off in London, but then we move on to Chicago. That's on October 23rd and 24th and then we end our revelation tour in Sydney, Australia. That's on November 9th. So it's a world tour. The AI system, what's your reaction to that kind of concept? Because what you're getting at here is personalization, more efficiency, better application integration down the road. I mean, it's pretty compelling. It is very compelling. So folks are like, I know what you're giving me. It's amazing. I just need the dates. I mean, just need to know when I can get my hands on it. I'm sold. Yeah. They're drinking the Kool-Aid as we say. Great to have you on the cube here. Congratulations on the news. Again, just a nice addition to the portfolio at Elation and congratulations on over a decade of success and all that machine learning and data works paying off for you guys and your customers. Junaid, thanks for coming on. Absolutely. Thank you for having me, John. Junaid, so here on theCUBE, CTO of Elation, bringing it down. A lot of stuff going on in the hood. People are super excited if you have data and are leaning into it, if you've been doing the work or have initiatives, the AI way is going to help. And again, a lot of automation, a lot of search efficiency, getting done things faster, reducing the time it takes to do things. And of course, the tsunami of applications that will be coming based on data is here. Mr. Cube, bringing you all the action. Thanks for watching.