As companies become inundated with new sources of data and analytics tools, the quality of the data becomes a factor in determining how to process it. The sheer amount of data being generated is a making it difficult to ensure high-quality analytics and processing, according to Satyen Sangani (pictured), chief executive officer of Alation Inc., a startup tackling the issues of data categorization and quality control.

“Now you’ve got this problem where you have all this data, and I don’t know what’s fake news or what’s real, what’s alternative fact or what doesn’t make any sense. And so you’ve got a signal to noise problem,” Sangani said.

Sangani spoke to John Furrier (@furrier), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during the SAP Sapphire Now conference in Orlando, Florida. They discussed some of the data quality challenges his company is helping to solve. (*Disclosure below.)

Quality over quantity

“We have on some level a providence problem, a trust problem inside of data in the enterprise,” Sangani said. “You need a layer of trust, understanding and context of the data.”

A simple analogy used by Sangani to describe his company is the organic labeling put on food so a person knows it is high quality and ready for consumption. He broke down his strategy as two-fold: on-premises installations and a cloud-based Software as a Service offering, which is where the intersection with SAP SE comes in. In both cases, the company’s mission statement is exactly the same.

“It’s really about focus and just helping customers that are making that digital, analytical transformation do it faster and do it by enabling their people,” Sangani concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of SAP Sapphire Now. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for SAP Sapphire Now. Neither SAP nor other sponsors have editorial influence on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE