We had Excel and Word documents, but nothing else. 

When we started our data warehouse project we were looking for a data governance tool. That led us to buy their data governance 1.0. They've upgraded to the 2.0 and we're working with that now. We then ended up buying the modeling software, so we got server licenses for some copies for our modeling, which is the foundation. Then we purchased their Mapping Manager harvester, their data integrator, their metadata package, and we've just recently even purchased their architectural software, so we're working with their entire stack.

This was the first metadata repository tool at this company.

We previously used Excel spreadsheets to do the mapping before switching to erwin Data Intelligence for the automation.

We have had multiple other tools and our metadata is currently fractured across multiple tools because we haven't had a good integration point for all of our information. erwin Data Intelligence Suite gives us that one, fantastic, single point of integration. That means we do not have to remain fractured across other tools, but also we don't need to reinvent the wheel and recreate a new system to contain all of our metadata. We have an opportunity to have it in a single place, working with it from a technical standpoint, governing it from a business standpoint, and integrating both the business and technical knowledge in a single location.

The tools we replaced were homegrown tools that made information available in a very manual fashion. We have replaced Excel spreadsheets as our documentation of mapping. We are replacing many different types of data sharing sites by having all of our information, our metadata, in a single location.

We were previously using Collibra and Talend data management. We switched this tool to help us build our data mapping, not just field-level mapping. There are also aspects of code set management, where we are translating different codes that we are standardizing to enterprise codes. With the reference data management aspects of it, we can build our own data sets within the tool and that data set is also integrated with our data pipeline.

We were definitely not sticking with the Talend tool because it increased our delivery time for data. When we were looking for other platforms, we needed a tool that captured data mapping in a way that a systematic program could actually read and understand it, then generate the dynamic code for an ETL processor pipeline.

Previously, we used IBM's Information Governance Catalog. We haven't switched to erwin as an enterprise, but we brought erwin DI in for the metadata mapping automation. It was the only product we found that could really target multiple SSIS from a single platform and had reverse- and forward-engineering capabilities.

Other than what we were doing with Excel, we were not using another solution prior to this one.

We did not previously use another solution. erwin didn't have a formal business glossary.

Compared to Informatica, erwin Data Intelligence by Quest is more integrated and has a better UI, but Informatica has a larger product line geared toward enterprise business. erwin Data Intelligence by Quest is focused on two areas.

We did not previously use another product.

We used this product even before it was bought by erwin. Before, it was a company called AnalytiX DS. Then, after two years ago, erwin bought this company and their product, doing some rebranding. So, we started using this product as version 8.0, then it was migrated to version 8.3. Now, we are using version 9.0. We went through a few versions of this product.

We previously used Excel. We switched to erwin DG because it had the best benefit-cost ratio and showed a lot of potential.