The IT Nerd

 CData Software today announced the appointment of Ken Yagen as Chief Product Officer (CPO). Yagen will lead product strategy and engineering as CData scales its connectivity platform for enterprises deploying agentic AI internally and for software providers building AI into their products.

The appointment comes as CData experiences rapid growth in the AI connectivity space. With thousands of users already connecting enterprise data sources to AI systems through CData’s MCP Servers, and the recent launch of Connect AI—a managed Model Context Protocol (MCP) platform—Yagen’s leadership will accelerate the company’s product roadmap.

Advancing AI-Native Connectivity

Yagen joins CData as the company shapes the emerging category of AI-native connectivity. Connect AI provides the enterprise-scale infrastructure that AI systems and autonomous agents require: live, governed access to business systems combined with embedded system-level semantic intelligence that teaches AI the structure, relationships, and business logic native to each platform—transforming raw connectivity into operational fluency.

Yagen is an accomplished product management and technology leader with more than 25 years of experience driving innovation in enterprise software. Most recently at Warburg Pincus, he led AI and LLM initiatives across the firm’s portfolio companies, helping enterprises integrate emerging AI technologies into their business strategies. His career includes pivotal roles at MuleSoft, where he shaped product strategy for APIs and integration platforms that became foundational to modern enterprise architecture, as well as leadership positions at Box and Symphony, where he drove collaboration and enterprise SaaS innovation.

Dual Market Strategy: Enterprises and ISVs

Under Yagen’s leadership, CData will accelerate its dual go-to-market strategy, enabling both direct enterprise adoption and embedded use by independent software vendors (ISVs). Organizations are adopting CData’s managed MCP platform to standardize connectivity across departments and initiatives, while software providers are embedding CData’s connectivity into their products to deliver enterprise-ready AI capabilities without building integrations themselves.

CData Software today announced it ranked on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™, a ranking of the 500 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, fintech, and energy tech companies in North America, now in its 31^st year.

CData Co-founder and CEO Amit Sharma attributes the company’s sustained growth and profitability to surging enterprise demand for real-time data connectivity and CData’s expanding ecosystem of global technology partners, including Salesforce, Google, Palantir, and SAP. As organizations accelerate their adoption of AI, analytics, and automation, CData’s solutions deliver the unified, secure, and scalable data access required to fuel those initiatives.

2025 Milestones & Momentum

In 2025, CData delivered a series of standout milestones that underscore its leadership in data connectivity:

• Expanded Partnership with Google Cloud: CData broadened its collaboration with Google Cloud, extending native connectivity across BigQuery, Looker, and Vertex AI to simplify real-time data access and analytics in Google Cloud environments.
• Launch of CData Embedded Cloud: The company introduced a new cloud-based connectivity platform enabling software providers to embed CData connectors without managing infrastructure, accelerating development cycles and time-to-market.
• Strengthened Partnership with Palantir Foundry: CData expanded its embedded integration capabilities within Palantir Foundry, enabling secure, governed access to hundreds of enterprise data sources directly through CData’s connectors.
• Introduction of CData Connect AI: The company launched Connect AI, the industry’s first managed Metadata, Connectivity & Processing (MCP) platform, empowering enterprises to connect AI applications to live, governed data across more than 300 enterprise systems.
• Expanded Integration Accelerator Portfolio: CData launched a suite of no-code Integration Accelerators for Snowflake, Microsoft Fabric, and Databricks, dramatically simplifying real-time, multi-cloud data integration and speeding time-to-insight for analytics and AI initiatives. 
• Strengthened Partnership with SAP: CData announced expanded connectivity support for SAP Datasphere and SAP Business Data Cloud, enabling enterprises to unify SAP and non-SAP data for enhanced analytics.
• Collaboration with Microsoft to Power Enterprise AI Agents: CData introduced Model Context Protocol (MCP) connectivity for Microsoft Copilot Studio and Microsoft Agent 365 through its Connect AI platform, enabling enterprises to build intelligent AI agents with real-time, semantic-rich access to 350+ data sources and enterprise-grade governance.
• Inc. 5000 Recognition: CData was once again named to the Inc. 5000 list, marking its second consecutive year of recognition for rapid growth and innovation.
• Named to Accel’s 2025 US AI 100: CData was recognized by Accel as one of the top companies shaping the future of AI and cloud innovation, underscoring the rising importance of seamless, governed data access as enterprises deploy AI assistants and intelligent agents at scale.

About the 2025 Deloitte Technology Fast 500

Now in its 31st year, the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 provides a ranking of the fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, fintech, and energy tech companies — both public and private — in North America. Technology Fast 500 award winners are selected based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2021 to 2024.

In order to be eligible for Technology Fast 500 recognition, companies must own proprietary intellectual property or proprietary technology that significantly contributes to the company’s operating revenues. Companies must have base-year operating revenues of at least US$50,000, and current-year operating revenues of at least US$5 million, with a growth rate of 50% or greater. Additionally, companies must be in business for a minimum of four years and be headquartered within North America (United States and Canada).

At its second annual Foundations conference, CData Software announced Connect AI, the first managed Model Context Protocol (MCP) platform that integrates AI assistants, agent orchestration platforms, AI workflow automation, and embedded AI applications with more than 300 enterprise data sources. With governed, in-place access to enterprise data, Connect AI preserves data semantics and relationships, giving AI complete understanding of the context. The solution also inherits user permissions and authentication directly from the source and can be deployed in the cloud or embedded within software products in minutes with point-and-click configuration.

Connect AI takes the same enterprise-grade connectivity technology already embedded by top technology companies including Palantir, SAP, Salesforce Data Cloud, and Google Cloud into their offerings, and reimagines it specifically for AI workloads with real-time semantic integration capabilities.

The solution builds on the momentum of the company’s MCP Servers, which have already seen thousands of users connect hundreds of data sources to AI assistants. The adoption validates AI’s need for governed enterprise data integration that understands context and relationships.

Breaking the Enterprise AI Deployment Barriers

Connect AI solves two core challenges MIT identified in its recent research. MIT reported that despite $30-40 billion in enterprise AI investment, 95% of AI pilots fail to deliver measurable business impact, primarily due to data access and governance challenges.

First, through data-in-place access, Connect AI preserves the rich contextual relationships that AI agents need for intelligent decision-making, delivering both immediate data access and meaningful data understanding.

Second, Connect AI inherits existing security and authentication protocols set in the source system ensuring AI access remains aligned with organizational controls. Data access is logged under the identity of the authenticated user or agent for comprehensive governance. Additional AI controls can be layered and managed within Connect AI.

Immediate Impact on Enterprises’ and Software Providers’ Use of AI

Enterprises use Connect AI with AI apps to get contextually-aware answers from business data in seconds; work that previously required days or weeks of report building. Its ability to handle complex queries across diverse systems with semantic understanding enables sales teams to use Claude for pipeline insights, marketing teams to prompt ChatGPT for campaign analysis, and finance teams to rely on Copilot for real-time budget updates and financial reports. IT and AI Engineering teams can also power agents built through AI workflow automation and agent orchestration platforms with direct, scalable access to semantically-rich enterprise data.

ISVs embed Connect AI directly within their products to provide their end-users with self-service integration between their data sources and the ISV’s agentic capabilities. The white-label offering gives tech companies an edge in the race for AI users because their agents can operate on the full semantic context of their end-users’ business, and not just on data brought directly into their products.

Industry Validation and Market Opportunity

This proven connectivity technology validates CData’s critical role in enterprise data connectivity and the company’s expansion into AI-native integration.

Availability

Connect AI is immediately available. More details are available here: www.cdata.com/ai

 CData Software today announced an expansion of its partnership with SAP focused on SAP Business Data Cloud–a  fully managed SaaS solution that unifies and governs all SAP data and seamlessly connects with third-party data. The collaboration aims to help customers connect to the data they care about most, by providing seamless, real-time access to the external data sources that modern enterprises depend on–without requiring data replication or custom code. 

Enabling Immediate, Self-Service Data Access

CData’s embeddable connectors provide direct, enterprise-grade integration to critical third-party platforms. Through the partnership, customers can access data, whether stored in cloud services, on-prem databases, or productivity tools, through a consistent, SQL-based interface.

By embedding CData connectors into SAP Business Data Cloud, SAP can provide its customers with access to non-SAP data, and improve their time-to-insight across AI, analytics, and operational workloads.

Driving the Shift Toward Open, AI-Ready Data

CData’s connector infrastructure helps ensure that every integration point meets the speed, security, and scale demands of AI-driven environments.

The expanded partnership comes at a time of significant growth for CData’s Embedded business, which has seen increased demand from software providers looking to offer connectivity to a growing variety of data sources. This momentum is fueled by the rising need for AI-ready data and the pressure on software providers to deliver immediate, self-service access to the data sources their users prioritize.

CData’s market leadership was recently validated by its inclusion in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools. This recognition reflects the differentiated business outcomes CData delivers to customers through its comprehensive connectivity solutions and integration capabilities.

This announcement follows CData’s strategic growth funding of approximately $350 million led by Warburg Pincus, with participation from Accel, announced in June 2024. The investment has allowed CData to accelerate its mission of simplifying data connectivity for enterprises, users, and applications through continued investments in operations, product development, and go-to-market strategy.

For more information about CData’s embedded connectivity solutions, visit www.cdata.com/embedded.