Atlan emerged seemingly out of nowhere to change into one of many preeminent suppliers of information catalog options. However the path to success for Atlan didn’t arrive spontaneously, and was the results of laborious work and expertise of CEO and co-founder Prukalpa Sankar, who can be a BigDATAwire Individual to Look ahead to 2025.
BigDATAwire: First, congratulations in your choice as a 2025 BigDATAwire Individual to Watch! Again in 2012, you and your eventual Atlan co-founder, Varun Banka, have been constructing a giant knowledge platform for prime minister of India. Did you ever assume that work you have been doing at SocialCops would result in a profitable firm?
Prukalpa Sankar: Completely not – and but, trying again, it feels nearly inevitable. On the time, we weren’t optimizing for fulfillment. We have been optimizing for influence. We didn’t got down to construct an organization – we got down to resolve significant, high-stakes issues.
From counting buildings with satellite tv for pc imagery to converging 600+ messy knowledge sources, SocialCops gave us a front-row seat to a number of the most painful, chaotic, and guide knowledge challenges on this planet. And once you stay via that ache lengthy sufficient, you both give up – otherwise you construct one thing higher. Atlan was born out of that “sufficient is sufficient” second.
We weren’t attempting to construct a startup. We have been simply obsessive about fixing the issue the correct means.
BDW: Atlan has change into one of many prime knowledge catalog suppliers over the previous few years, and was the far and away chief in the latest Forrester Wave for Enterprise Knowledge Catalogs. What do you attribute that success to?
PS: Our greatest aggressive benefit is care.
At Atlan, we function with a core precept: clients > firm > staff > me. That hierarchy shapes each determination, each line of code, each roadmap debate. We actually care – about fixing actual issues, about making our clients heroes of their organizations, about being an actual accomplice of their journey.
This stage of empathy has helped us construct belief. It’s why we’ve persistently been the top-rated resolution throughout industries and buyer evaluation platforms. It’s additionally why we’ve been capable of innovate forward of the curve.
We have been the primary to launch Atlan AI. The primary to operationalize Knowledge Mesh and Knowledge Merchandise in a catalog. We pioneered Energetic Metadata and redefined the class – not as a documentation software, however as a dwelling, respiratory cloth of the fashionable knowledge stack.
We didn’t simply speak about “shifting left.” We constructed workflows that combine metadata natively inside engineering instruments. Each a kind of bets got here from listening deeply and caring intensely.
And that care might be our edge going ahead. As our clients face the most important shift of their careers on this new AI-native world, they received’t want simply one other vendor. They’ll want a accomplice they will belief. We plan to point out up with the identical stage of care, empathy, and innovation they’ve all the time recognized us for.
BDW: Knowledge governance is tough. What’s the one most necessary factor that practitioners do to enhance their odds of success, or no less than reduce the ache?
PS: Begin with the enterprise downside. Not the know-how.
After working with 200+ knowledge groups, we’ve constructed one thing we name the Atlan Approach – a set of hard-won classes about what really makes governance succeed. Not simply the tech, however the folks, this system, and the working mannequin.
Most governance packages fail for one in every of three causes:
- They by no means stand up and operating.
The metadata stays dry. Implementation is just too guide. It’s too laborious to keep up. That’s why we constructed Atlan to be automation-first and to shift left – deeply integrating into the information producer workflow. Governance shouldn’t be a one-time setup. It ought to be a sustainable, long-term behavior – a part of the way you construct and ship knowledge merchandise every single day. - They by no means get adopted.
That is the place our change administration philosophy kicks in: don’t drive it. Take know-how to your customers – don’t convey your customers to the know-how. That’s why Atlan reveals up the place your staff already works: inside Slack, Microsoft Groups, BI instruments, and knowledge warehouses. We meet folks the place they’re, not the place we want they’d be. - They’re not future-ready.
Change is the one fixed within the knowledge ecosystem. Two years in the past, no person was speaking about vector databases. Final 12 months, they have been in all places. This 12 months, the dialog has already moved on. Governance techniques can’t be brittle. That’s why we’re constructing a totally open platform – so governance doesn’t gradual groups down, it units them free.
On the finish of the day, we consider governance ought to be invisible. It shouldn’t really feel like management. It ought to really feel like enablement. Embedded within the workflow. Constructed for actual people. And all the time evolving.
BDW: Atlan’s technique is to function the metadata management airplane, sitting above the information software stack to manipulate knowledge by way of metadata. That’s not how knowledge practitioners are accustomed to doing all the things inside their software. What’s the secret to altering these outdated habits?
PS: The key is straightforward: you don’t change habits—you design round it.
Certainly one of our earliest classes at SocialCops was that folks revert to what’s best. You possibly can’t brute-force new workflows. So as an alternative of attempting to battle that, we constructed Atlan to be the connective tissue – not a brand new silo. Our philosophy is to meet folks the place they’re, not the place we want they have been.
That’s the place Energetic Metadata is available in. Most metadata platforms act like passive libraries – nice for documentation, however disconnected from actual work. We flipped that mode. Atlan prompts metadata throughout the stack – embedding it into instruments groups already use: GitHub, Slack, Groups, dbt, BI instruments, and knowledge warehouses.
We’ve introduced metadata into engineering workflows, the place producers really construct and ship knowledge merchandise. We’ve helped knowledge customers discover trusted context proper contained in the instruments they already use. That is what we imply by shifting governance left – governance that looks like a function, not a friction.
As a result of on the finish of the day, “Metadata isn’t a layer you add. It’s the muse you construct on.”
BDW: GenAI instruments and LLMs are proliferating in enterprise knowledge stacks. What difficulties do these new instruments and applied sciences pose to knowledge governance?
PS: We’re now not in a digital-native world. We’re coming into an AI-native one.
Probably the most attention-grabbing factor about LLMs is that they now perceive language – however they don’t perceive which means. Solely people can educate that. And as LLMs begin doing extra of the work people as soon as did, one query issues most: are you able to belief it?
Are you able to belief the information that skilled the mannequin? Are you able to belief the mannequin that produced the output? Are you able to belief the AI-generated motion that impacts your online business, your clients, or your model?
That’s the place governance steps in. Not as coverage enforcement, however as a system for context and belief.
Within the AI-native enterprise, governance isn’t a back-office operate. It’s a frontline enabler. The businesses that transfer quick and construct belief would be the ones that win. However that’s solely attainable if governance evolves into an clever, embedded, real-time functionality.
We consider that is governance’s leapfrog second – an opportunity to maneuver from being a price middle to a aggressive benefit. As companies rewire their merchandise and processes with GenAI, the actual query received’t be “Can we do that?” It is going to be “Can we belief this?”
That belief needs to be systemic. It could actually’t cease on the knowledge. It has to stream via the complete lifecycle of choices, fashions, and automation. That’s the position of Energetic Metadata as a semantic layer: making which means machine-readable, making governance invisible, and serving to AI act with context and care.
And that’s why “Within the AI-native period, governance isn’t a blocker. It’s the unlock.”
BDW: What are you able to inform us about your self exterior of the skilled sphere – distinctive hobbies, favourite locations, and so forth.? Is there something about you that your colleagues is perhaps shocked to be taught?
PS: I’m the one Prukalpa on this planet – actually. My dad and mom say they considered website positioning earlier than Google existed, and truthfully… they weren’t fallacious.
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