Collibra acquires data notebook vendor for analytics tools

Added capabilities

The acquisition is the third for the data management vendor, following its 2021 purchase of OwlDQ to add tools that target data quality and its 2019 purchase of SQLdep to improve data lineage capabilities.

Once Husprey is integrated into Collibra, the acquisition will enable Collibra customers to run ad hoc queries of their data within Data Intelligence Cloud. Previously, Collibra had to be integrated with a BI platform in order for users to run queries and analyze data.

In addition, the acquisition of Husprey will provide Collibra customers with a data workspace where they can collaborate and reach collective decisions. Within the workspace are intelligent automation capabilities powered by AI that can help users better understand their data and ask follow-up questions of their data to develop more informed insights.

The intended results of the acquisition include simplified workflows and easier contextualization of data so users can more quickly glean meaning and make business decisions within Collibra, according to the vendor.

With these new capabilities, Collibra does cross the Rubicon. Previously, its products helped organization manage data, including cataloging and governing that data. But with SQL data notebooks it takes them into data analysis.

Because the addition of Husprey's tools bring analytics into Collibra for the first time, the acquisition is an important one, according to David Menninger, an analyst at Ventana Research.

"With these new capabilities, Collibra does [move into new territory]," he said. "Previously, its products helped organizations manage data, including cataloging and governing that data. But with SQL data notebooks it takes them into data analysis."

Menninger added that Collibra has long enabled users to prepare data for analysis with data profiling, data quality and data observability tools. But preparation for analysis is where Collibra's capabilities ended before its acquisition of Husprey.

Now, customers can use Collibra for data analysis as well.

"Husprey is designed specifically for ad hoc analysis, including sharing the results with others," he said.

Beyond adding query and analysis capabilities to Collibra's existing capabilities, one of the key benefits of the acquisition is the talent Collibra will inherit from Husprey, according to Laura Sellers, Collibra's chief product officer.

Thibaut Collette is Husprey's co-founder and CEO, and Joffrey Villard is co-founder and chief technology officer. Sellers noted that both have experience developing not only query and analysis capabilities but also natural language processing and generative AI tools.

"We're thrilled to bring on board the Husprey team," she said. "Husprey's founders have experience with developing text-to-SQL and generative AI capabilities, which we believe will help us unlock new and compelling AI capabilities for our customers."

But the acquisition isn't simply intended to add capabilities, Sellers continued. It's also about combining Collibra's pre-existing capabilities such as its metadata graph with Husprey's AI capabilities to strengthen both.

"These new capabilities will … boost trust and speed discovery of insights," she said. "Data analysts' work will be simplified and streamlined with intelligent automation through AI to automatically generate documentation, queries and notebooks."

While query and analysis capabilities are major additions for Collibra, the vendor is not the first data catalog and governance specialist to offer such capabilities, Menninger noted.

For example, Precisely offers analytics capabilities with Data360 Analyze. Alation, meanwhile, supports SQL queries with Compose.

"At a minimum, they all offer data profiling tools," Menninger said. "Some offer more direct support for SQL interaction with the data. Other vendors provide more in the way of analytics. Husprey is targeted directly at the analytics market but is focused on the gap between SQL tabular outputs and prebuilt dashboards."

Wayne Eckerson, founder and analyst at Eckerson Group, similarly noted that adding query and analysis capabilities is important for data catalog specialists such as Collibra since catalogs provide access to metadata but not the data itself.

As a result, Collibra is joining a group of catalog specialists by adding analytics capabilities.

"Most data catalog vendors are now trying to [provide] some form of data access and/or provisioning," he said. "This acquisition is a step in that direction, essentially embedding a power user tool within Collibra."

Next steps

Menninger said now that Collibra has added SQL query and analysis capabilities, he'd like the vendor to continue building out its platform so users don't have to piece together data stacks made up of tools from a litany of different vendors.

That goes for Collibra's competitorsm such as Alation, Informatica and Talend (now owned by Qlik), as well.

Menninger noted that despite integrations, the different tools are not always well connected. As a result, important data lineage and observability features that ensure data quality don't always transfer from one vendor's platform to another as data moves through the pipeline from ingestion to analysis.

"There is still too much of a gap between different data and analytics tools in the market," he said. "There are too many data catalogs -- every product has one. They are not well connected. As a result, enterprises need to stitch together many different products to have a complete solution. I'd like to see Collibra and others trying to eliminate those gaps."

Eric Avidon is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial and journalist with more than 25 years of experience. He covers analytics and data management.