Alation offers enterprise data intelligence solutions, including data search & discovery, data governance, data stewardship, analytics, and digital transformation. Alation operates in thethe data catalog market. With its Behavioral Analysis Engine, inbuilt collaboration capabilities, and open interfaces, Alation combines machine learning with human insight with the goal of tackle the most demanding challenges in data and metadata management.
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Appian
Score 8.2 out of 10
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Appian is a low-code development and business process management platform. It features drag-and-drop design for app building, automated work processes, unified data management, and cloud-based deployment.
$0
IBM Datacap
Score 10.0 out of 10
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IBM® Datacap helps users streamline the capture, recognition and classification of business documents and extract important information. Datacap supports multiple-channel capture by processing paper documents on scanners, mobile devices, multi-function peripherals and fax. It uses natural language processing, text analytics and machine learning technologies, to automatically identify, classify and extract content from unstructured or variable documents. The software can reduce labor and paper…
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Pricing
Alation Data Catalog
Appian
IBM Datacap
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Appian Community Edition
$0
Application - Input-Only
$2
per month per user
Application - Infrequent
$9
per month per user
Application - Standard
$75
per month per user
Platform
Custom Quote Priced per user with unlimited apps.
minimum 100 users, no maximum
Unlimited
Custom Quote Priced per development with unlimited apps.
unlimited
Platform
Custom Quote Priced per user with unlimited apps.
Minimum 100, no maximum
Unlimited
Custom Quote Priced per development with unlimited apps.
Alation is well suited to helping a user find a column or even a query using a business term search. In this regard Alation is excellent because it's easy to not only associate these items with each other, but there are also many ways to link the column and/or query to that business term/concept
Appian works great for automating manual processes and integrating multiple systems through its toolset. It gives great flexibility for establishing rules for approvals, routings, escalations, and the like. Because of the low code toolset, it's very easy to deploy and make changes as needed as processes evolve and as the organization learns to utilize the system better. Minimal maintenance is required to support the applications build on the platform. Some of the automated testing integration with tools like Jenkins is limited so that may be an issue for some.
Once highly customized, IBM Datacap can suit any business unit and scenario. To realize accurate knowledge and insight base on business documents, I would emphasize use of IBM Datacap since it has robust OCR tool that ease document capturing.
Ability to link objects using the @ symbol. It allows us to easily provide a way to get more information or context. So if the business concept is part of a hierarchy, we can link to the other terms in that hierarchy.
The customization is really helpful. Most object types have robust customization options. Others are less so, but it is improving. We've created multiple custom fields to support our data governance framework.
The search feature with filtering is helpful in narrowing down what you're looking for.
Allows at a glance workflow documentation which assists in the need we have for information readiation.
Drag and drop interface for workflow development greatly speeds our apps time to market.
Using the advanced features of Appian, we are able to create working sites in a fraction of the time it would take to do so using "traditional" development.
The lineage UI is not ready for primetime. I would not recommend this feature for my users at this time because it's too complex to understand and is visually difficult to track down specific paths.
The underlying infrastructure of the on-premise version of the software is fragile and unnecessarily complicated, using too many modules and technologies.
The license model of the on-premise version contains too many add-ons. I would like to pay one price and get all of the features.
Search issues when type ahead and database search are used in the same field.
Buttons implementation where user is require[d] to click on the button description - if clicks on the button outside that text - button will not work.
Problems with using certain off-the-shelf performance tools like WebLoad or Neoload. That is because of different dynamic variables being used internally in Appian - which these tools are unable to correlate. We are still investigating using other tools like Jmeter to overcome dynamic correlation problem for performance testing.
Overall, we are happy with the functionality of the platform. While there are are areas that we would like to see further improvement in, the tooling is highly configurable and aligns well with our use case. A mature API layer makes it straightforward to integrate with other data tooling. Alation stands out for its pro-active engagement with their customers, both to resolve issues and in communicating their feature roadmap
We recently renewed our license with Appian. We are convinced that its flexibility, relative ease of use, the support they provide, there mobile advancements and their general willingness and desire to see us succeed all contributed to our reason to renew our agreement with Appian
Alation Data Catalog is generally easy to use for finding datasets, reviewing documentation, and understanding ownership. The platform makes data discovery more efficient and improves trust in shared assets. I rated it 7 because the navigation can be complex at times, and the search results could be more precise and easier to refine.
Appian is a low code environment, because of this, a very good visual interface is required. Appian is providing a feature-rich dashboard [that] we can use for building the dashboards and other interfaces. Appian also provides patches and releases to enhance these features. A developer can start off development just by going through a basic course from the Appian learning community.
The account management and technical support teams are both excellent. There is regular account manager engagement, and technical issues are generally resolved very quickly. The vendor engages us in product development through regular updates on the product strategy & feature roadmap.
Appian is one of the leading low code business automation platforms that support RPA, decision rules, case management, workflow automation, and machine learning all in a single bundle. But it is also harder to implement and replace the traditional business process.
As analyst I participated in a developer boot camp. At times it was hard to keep up but most of the time it made sense. Trainer took the time to explain and slowed pace down to answer questions etc.
Key insight from implementing Alation is that, as a cloud-based SaaS product, the majority of effort is not infrastructure-related but instead focused on security configuration and integration with existing platforms, including identity management, access controls, and metadata connectivity to core data systems. Because of its data profiling functionality, careful consideration had to be given to data security and data sovereignty.
Alation provided the right balance of connection with systems in use, trusted reputation and affordability. The product integrates with current ways of working and does not require reorganisation within other lines of business.
Appian has enormously transformed and keeps on updating the product every quarter to meet the latest needs of the world with new innovations & technologies being integrated within the platform. What gives more pleasure than a product that keeps on continuous[ly] improv[ing]?
We've had limited but very positive impact for 3 data subject matter experts. In the past they were fielding very similar questions from users stumbling on their data. Now, rather than responding to each email or chat message, they not only direct users to the catalog but they also reach out to me to do a walk-through of Alation's other features.
Another positive impact is having the data dictionary live in one location. This has been tremendous in making the dictionaries accessible and consistent.
I believe it has negatively impacted our release dates. There may have been a misunderstanding as to the learning curve, even though it is "low code."
The look and feel of the applications created using Appian have uniformity and it's easier to have "reuse" between applications.
There is less developer control when it comes to features. I think this mainly has to do with the amount of plugins available. I would think there should be many more available plugins. But again, our use case is probably different than most others.
We have protected and safeguarded business information by redacting documents to ensure that confidential data doesn’t reach to irrelevant business users or cyber attackers.
Business procedures automation has been enhanced by IBM Datacap as part of the Cloud pak, which eases workflow and decision management.
Being based on modern modular, IBM Datacap allows us to pay for what we use, thus no losses are encountered.
