Alation Data Catalog vs erwin Data Intelligence by Quest comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Alation Data Catalog and erwin Data Intelligence by Quest based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Data Governance solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Alation Data Catalog vs. erwin Data Intelligence by Quest Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"We can customize templates based on our use cases.""The platform's most valuable features are workflow automation, automated business metadata tagging, technical metadata tagging, and data integration with data quality tools or platforms.""The most valuable features of Alation Data Catalog are the simplicity in onboarding data sources, the security in securing the data sources, and the way the various users of Alation Data Catalog communicate with each other through a messenger.""Alation Data Catalog's best feature is the SQL query publication.""Given the relatively low level of maturity, Alation's most relevant feature at the moment is a user interface that's easy to navigate, which helps us find and understand the data. So while Alation has a lot more functionality, our pain point right now is being able to easily find, understand, and trust the information to use it.""We had some of our data science engineers, who had built out some cloud-based data and data products for users. They were spending a lot of their time, up to 30 to 35% of their time, answering questions about the data and helping people understand how to use it. Once they were able to document that information within Alation, they were only focusing on around 5% of the high-value questions that really couldn't be solved through the catalog itself. It freed them up to be more productive, it made their end-users more productive, and it made the adoption rate of their data products rise more quickly because people were able to get to using them.""The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature."

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"Data Intelligence allows us to automate multiple tasks we had previously done manually, such as restructuring the metadata for our purposes, setting up ETL flows, and defining the data tables we create. It also enables us to standardize our approach and our technical processes.""The biggest impact for us is that erwin generates DDL extremely quickly. We're able to pull in metadata, map it to a target, generate DDL to create the tables, and generate SSIS packages. Previously, especially going back 10 to 15 years ago, hundreds of hours had to be spent to manually perform these tasks. This solution completely automates it and gets it 90% done. We can then pass it off to a developer to create the items in SSIS.""The data management is, obviously, key in understanding where the data is and what the data is. And the governance can be done at multiple levels. You have the governance of the code sets versus the governance of the business terms and the definitions of those business terms. You have the governance of the business data models and how those business data models are driving the physical implementation of the actual databases. And, of course, you have the governance of the mapping to make sure that source-to-target mapping is done and is being shared across the company.""Overall, DI's data cataloging, data literacy, and automation have helped our decision-makers because when a source wants to change something, we immediately know what the impact is going to be downstream.""We always know where our data is, and anybody can look that up, whether they're a business person who doesn't know anything about Informatica, or a developer who knows everything about creating data movement jobs in Informatica, but who does not understand the business terminology or the data that is being used in the tool.""It is a central place for everybody to start any ETL data pipeline builds. This tool is being heavily used, plus it's heavily integrated with all the ETL data pipeline design and build processes. Nobody can bypass these processes and do something without going through this tool.""Data Intelligence creates a single source of truth for all of our metadata. This solution is better for data warehousing, but the metadata features speed up our development work. It's easy to create and manage mappings because we can export them to Informatica and pick up the work where we left off.""The biggest benefit with erwin DI is that I have a single source of truth that I can send anybody to. If anybody doesn't know the answer we can go back to it. Just having a central location of business rules is good."

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Cons
"Alation Data Catalog needs to develop a lot in terms of data governance and would be improved with a built-in interactive data quality solution.""Alation Data Catalog doesn't support end-to-end lineage. By that, I mean the ability to trace the movement of data from when it first comes into our organization to where it's consumed.""Alation Data Catalog does not provide end-to-end data lineage.""The interface is not user-friendly.""I know that this has been on their roadmap and they're working on it, but as a whole, there's an untapped reservoir of capabilities within their article features that could be used and built upon.""The product's data governance features need improvement.""The tool's domain model needs to be changed."

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"If we are talking about the business side of the product, maybe the Data Literacy could be made a bit simpler. You have to put your hands on it, so there is room for improvement.""The fact that I sometimes have to go in and out of different applications, even though it's all part of the whole erwin suite, perhaps means it could be architected a little bit better. I think they do have some ideas for improvements there.""Another area where it can improve is by having BB-Graph-type databases where relationship discovery and relationship identification are much easier.""We still need another layer of data quality assessments on the source to see if it is sending us the wrong data or if there are some issues with the source data. For those things, we need a rule-based data quality assessment or scoring where we can assess tools or other technology stacks. We need to be able to leverage where the business comes in, defining some business rules and have the ability to execute those rules, then score the data quality of all those attributes. Data quality is definitely not what we are leveraging from this tool, as of today.""The versioning can sometimes be confusing because we use the publishing feature for the mapping. Technical analysts sometimes have two versions, and they should know that the public version is the correct one.""The data quality assessment requires third-party components and a separate license.""There may be some opportunities for improvement in terms of the user interface to make it a little bit more intuitive. They have made some good progress. Originally, when we started, we were on version 9 or 10. Over the last couple of releases, I've seen some improvements that they have made, but there might be a few other additional areas in UI where they can make some enhancements.""The metadata ingestion is very nice because of the ability to automate it. It would be nice to be able to do this ingestion, or set it up, from one place, instead of having to set it up separately for every data asset that is ingested."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "A three-year agreement is better than a one-year rolling 12-month agreement from a price point of view. I'd recommend looking at a three-year deal because you can't stand up a catalog and produce value in 12 months."
  • "The solution is a little expensive."
  • "The platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market."
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  • "The licensing cost is around $7,000 for user. This is an estimation."
  • "There is an additional fee for the server maintenance."
  • "The whole suite, not just the DI but the modeling software, the harvester, Mapping Manager — everything we have — is about $100,000 a year for our renewals. That works out to each module being something like $8,000 to $10,000."
  • "erwin's pricing was cheaper than its competitors."
  • "You buy a seat license for your portal. We have 100 seats for the portal, then you buy just the development licenses for the people who are going to put the data in."
  • "erwin is cheaper than other solutions and this should appeal to other buyers. It has a good price tag."
  • "We operate on a yearly subscription and because it is an enterprise license we only have one. It is not dependent on the number of users."
  • "Smart Data Connectors have some costs, and then there are user-based licenses. We spend roughly $150,000 per year on the solution. It is a yearly subscription license that basically includes the cost for Smart Data Connectors and user-based licenses. We have around 30 data stewards who maintain definitions, and then we have five IT users who basically maintain the overall solution. It is not a SaaS kind of operation, and there is an infrastructure cost to host this solution, which is our regular AWS hosting cost."
  • More erwin Data Intelligence by Quest Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The platform's most valuable features are workflow automation, automated business metadata tagging, technical metadata tagging, and data integration with data quality tools or platforms.
    Top Answer:The platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market.
    Top Answer:The product's data governance features need improvement.
    Top Answer:The data mapping manager is the most valuable feature.
    Top Answer:The data quality assessment requires third-party components and a separate license. I would like to have better integration around the data quality. I would appreciate the inclusion of a… more »
    Ranking
    5th
    out of 57 in Data Governance
    Views
    8,947
    Comparisons
    5,807
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    317
    Rating
    7.0
    3rd
    out of 57 in Data Governance
    Views
    5,066
    Comparisons
    1,581
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    1,311
    Rating
    8.4
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Alation
    erwin DG, erwin Data Governance
    Learn More
    Overview

    Alation pioneered the data catalog market and is now leading its evolution into a platform for a broad range of data intelligence solutions including data search & discovery, data governance, lineage, stewardship, analytics, and digital transformation.

    Thanks to its powerful Behavioral Analysis Engine, inbuilt collaboration capabilities, and open interfaces, Alation combines machine learning with human insight to successfully tackle even the most demanding challenges in data and metadata management. With Alation, analysts are empowered to search, query and collaborate on their data to achieve faster, more accurate insights.

    Trusted by 400+ enterprises worldwide like Salesforce, Nasdaq, LinkedIn, Finnair, and Cisco.

    The erwin Data Intelligence Suite (erwin DI) combines data catalog and data literacy capabilities for greater awareness of and access to available data assets, guidance on their use, and guardrails to ensure data policies and best practices are followed. Automatically harvest, transform and feed metadata from a wide array of data sources, operational processes, business applications and data models into a central data catalog. Then make it accessible and understandable within context via role-based views. This complete metadata-driven approach to data governance facilitates greater IT and business collaboration.

    Sample Customers
    Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
    Oracle, Infosys, GSK, Toyota Motor Sales, HSBC
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Retailer14%
    Insurance Company14%
    Government14%
    Computer Software Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Government8%
    REVIEWERS
    Insurance Company28%
    Pharma/Biotech Company22%
    Computer Software Company22%
    Healthcare Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company13%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Government11%
    Insurance Company8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise63%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise72%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business5%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise74%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise64%
    Buyer's Guide
    Alation Data Catalog vs. erwin Data Intelligence by Quest
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Alation Data Catalog vs. erwin Data Intelligence by Quest and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Alation Data Catalog is ranked 5th in Data Governance with 7 reviews while erwin Data Intelligence by Quest is ranked 3rd in Data Governance with 18 reviews. Alation Data Catalog is rated 7.8, while erwin Data Intelligence by Quest is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Alation Data Catalog writes "The catalog now provides an opportunity for people to come together, to share, and to find". On the other hand, the top reviewer of erwin Data Intelligence by Quest writes "Enabled us to centralize a tremendous amount of data into a common standard, and uniform reporting has decreased report requests". Alation Data Catalog is most compared with Microsoft Purview, Collibra Governance, Informatica Axon, Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog and BigID, whereas erwin Data Intelligence by Quest is most compared with Microsoft Purview, Collibra Governance, Informatica Axon, Collibra Lineage and Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager. See our Alation Data Catalog vs. erwin Data Intelligence by Quest report.

    See our list of best Data Governance vendors.

    We monitor all Data Governance reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.