Nov 16, 2022

November 16, 2022 - Advertisement - Alertex continued its move to the cloud on Wednesday with the early access launch of the SaaS version of Designer for Alertex Analytics Cloud. - Advertisement - Early access is available to hundreds of customers representing thousands of users, with general availability expected in early 2023, according to the vendor. - Advertisement - In addition, although Alertex doesn’t provide public pricing details for Designer Cloud, existing users won’t have to pay extra for the new version of Designer. Alteryx, founded in 1997 and based in Irvine, California, is a data management and analytics vendor whose platforms automate the data preparation process. - Advertisement - After previewing its first cloud-based capabilities in May 2021, in February 2022, the vendor launched those capabilities, including Designer Cloud, which integrates with Alertex for preparing, blending, and outputting unwritten data. There is a cloud-based version of the tool. code. A month later, the vendor packaged the four cloud-based capabilities together with Trifecta to form Alertex Analytics Cloud, which it recently acquired. new capabilities Now, Alteryx is pairing designers with Trifacta’s cloud-native data wrangling capabilities to expand its reach and make it truly cloud native. The new SaaS version of Designer can be accessed through any web browser so anyone within an organization can use the tool. In addition, instead of forcing users to go through the time-consuming extract, transform, and load process, the data in the database can be pushed to the cloud data warehouse to work with. In particular, access to the designer by anyone via a Web browser is critical, according to Rowan Curran, an analyst with Forrester Research. “This finally allows Alteryx users to be free of the need to install a desktop, and will hopefully make it easier for users to more easily take advantage of Alteryx’s most advanced features as there is no need to update to the latest version.” Will be,” he said. Meanwhile, Jay Henderson, Alertx’s vice president of product management, said the early access launch of the new Designer Cloud represents progress as Alertx strives to unify its platforms. Alteryx acquires Trifacta to enhance Alteryx’s cloud-native capabilities. But while Trifacta’s cloud-native capabilities were bundled into Alertex Analytics Cloud, its capabilities didn’t blend perfectly with those of the already existing Alertex tools. Now, the equipment inherited with the Trifacta acquisition is being combined with the equipment Alteryx had prior to the acquisition. “We’re putting [Designer] “On top of the Trifacta infrastructure,” Henderson said. The development of the new designer capabilities is Alertex’s response to market trends, he added. Data management and analysis has historically been the domain of IT departments and centralized data teams. Now, however, many organizations want more than a select few data specialists working with analytics. They want end users to be able to make data-driven decisions in real time, and this requires self-service tools that are easy to use. Alertex’s Analytics Cloud is designed for ease of use with its no-code and low-code capabilities. Meanwhile, as more organizations migrate their analytics operations to the cloud, they want cloud-native capabilities. “Companies are continuing to tap analytics into their knowledge workers — there’s a steady march toward putting more information in the hands of everyday employees and getting it out of the ivory towers of IT,” Henderson said. “And if you look at the way companies are investing, they’re moving data to the cloud and using cloud data warehouses, and they want to get value from those investments.” cloud motion Beyond combining Alteryx’s existing capabilities with the capabilities added through Trifacta, the new Designer Cloud represents progress for Alteryx as it remakes itself for the cloud. Alertex was slow to develop cloud-native data and analytics capabilities, not introducing its first cloud-native until this year. By comparison, peers including SAS, Dataiku, Databricks and Naim put their emphasis on the cloud before Alertex. In addition, before Alteryx introduced a single cloud-native capability, traditional BI vendors such as ThoughtSpot, Click and MicroStrategy overhauled their platforms to be cloud-first. “We were certainly later than some other software companies to drive toward the cloud,” Henderson said. “But I think we’re happy with the progress we’re making.” After its slow start, Alteryx has made the transition to the cloud a priority, so much so that it overhauled its executive suite to bring in leaders with cloud experience. Among them, CEO Mark Anderson was hired in 2020 after serving as president of Palo Alto Networks and working at Cisco earlier in his career, and Chief Product Officer Suresh Vittal after four years in 2021 as Adobe Experience Cloud was associated with. Since then, Alertex has focused on its transition to the cloud. “It’s good for us to have some steady momentum around the cloud … and for us to bring the designer cloud [the Trifacta] Infrastructure is a huge milestone for us,” Anderson said. The momentum around the cloud has been outpaced by the technological modernization of Alertex’s balance sheet. The 25-year-old seller said it has added more than 1,000 new customers in the past 18 months, an increase of about 15%. And Alteryx’s annual recurring revenue is up nearly 50% from $500 million to $757.7 million. The launch of Designer Cloud, according to Curran, has the potential to fuel further growth. “This continues Alertx’s progress towards becoming a more cloud-first company, which is critical to continuing their rate of growth,” he added. “Enabling our customers to use Alertex Designer in the cloud is a great step forward in continuing to appeal to new and existing customers who need their enterprise tooling environments deployed to the cloud.” the road ahead According to Henderson, Alertex’s roadmap includes a focus on governance, with a fully cloud-native version of Designer Cloud slated for general availability early next year. Vendor tools are designed to enable self-service use, but require limits on what data employees can access. While a CEO or other executive-level employee may have access to nearly all of their organization’s data, there is data that a lower-level employee should not be allowed to see. Therefore, there is a need for governance to protect organizations while simultaneously empowering employees to work safely and confidently with the data they access. In addition, adding collaboration capabilities will be a priority, Henderson said. Meanwhile, Alertex will continue to evolve towards the cloud. “Our goal has always been to meet customers no matter where they are in their cloud journey,” Henderson said. “We’re still investing in our on-premises products, but in parallel, we’ve been able to invest in the cloud.”