Empowering Scalable, AI-Ready Data Modeling with CData Embedded Cloud

Ellie.ai is a collaborative data modeling platform built to align technical and business stakeholders around structured data design. Known for its intuitive, non-technical interface, Ellie.ai helps large enterprises and data-driven teams model, govern, and operationalize high-value data products across complex global environments.

Its clients include leading global data-driven enterprises with large-scale, highly distributed data infrastructures in financial services, telecommunications, manufacturing, and health care.

“We’re the opposite of legacy modeling tools. Our focus is usability, clarity, and collaboration, not forcing business users to read 68-table ERDs just to participate.”

— Sami Hero, CEO, Ellie.ai

The challenge: Too many sources, not enough bandwidth

While Ellie.ai offered a strong platform for conceptual and logical modeling, its customers increasingly needed to understand what data already existed across their environments, spanning operational systems, legacy databases, data warehouses, and lakehouses.

However:

• Pulling metadata from these systems was inconsistent and fragmented.
• Many customers had tight security or on-premises systems with no easy way to surface metadata or sample data.
• Building native integrations to hundreds of sources would have consumed Ellie's small engineering team.

"We needed to scale up the way our platform could ingest and enrich metadata—across SAP, Salesforce, HubSpot, Snowflake, and more—without building every connector ourselves.”

— Sami Hero, CEO, Ellie.ai

The solution: One interface, many data sources

Ellie.ai embedded CData’s white-labeled Embedded Cloud platform to give users a simple, branded interface for:

• Selecting source systems (from 160+ available)
• Authenticating securely using their own credentials
• Extracting metadata and sample data (e.g., 100 rows) from those systems
• Feeding that information into Ellie’s AI layer to create synthetic metadata, tag relevant tables, and suggest models

Ellie also built an abstraction layer to simplify connector selection and handle configuration before handing off to CData for live data access.

“CData gives us the breadth and standardization we need and lets our engineers focus on customer-facing innovation, not building connectors for every new system our clients use.”

— Sami Hero, CEO, Ellie.ai

How it works: Read data, ready for modeling

Ellie.ai integrates seamlessly with CData Embedded Cloud so users have a streamlined path from raw enterprise metadata to AI-suggested, production-ready data models.

• Customers connect to their enterprise systems through Ellie’s UI (powered by CData Embedded Cloud)
• Metadata and sample data is extracted via Embedded Cloud
• An LLM generates synthetic context, including:
  • Table and attribute descriptions in business understandable language
  • Entity suggestions for business questions such as “I need to report on customer profitability”
  • Relationship suggestions
• Ellie.ai uses this data to build a collaborative data model and glossary
• Modelers push designs to GitHub, Azure DevOps, dbt, etc., for downstream engineering

“We now offer 160+ connectors out of the box. That’s not just a technical win; it’s a business enabler. It makes our platform dramatically more valuable to the end customer.”

— Sami Hero, CEO, Ellie.ai

The outcome: Smart modeling, faster adoption

With Embedded Cloud integrated into the product, Ellie.ai has enabled:

• Faster onboarding: End users can understand what data exists and start modeling in minutes, not days
• AI-augmented modeling: LLMs help recommend data structures, reducing friction for business users
• Fewer support tickets: Ellie handles more sources out of the box, reducing custom work
• Higher conversion: Customers are more likely to adopt Ellie when their systems are visible and usable from day one

“Our goal is to democratize modeling; to make it intuitive and useful for the next generation of data workers. Embedded Cloud helps us do that at scale.”

— Sami Hero, CEO, Ellie.ai

To learn how software companies can provide users with self-service data connectivity without the building and maintenance burden, check out CData Embedded Cloud.