Alation Data Catalog vs. Cloudera Data Platform

Alation is pretty easy to implement. We were able to do it ourselves with Alation's help, no 3rd party needed. We are currently migrating to Snowflake, and it has been helpful with prioritizing what gets migrated. It's great for searching for tables and views. I even use it when I'm trying to find fields in a large table. If I'm not sure if the field is called first_name, firstname, or fname, I can use Alation's table page, filter for fields with "name", and easily find it.

Incentivized

I have seen that Cloudera Data Platform is well suited for large batch processes. It works really well for our indication analyses that are performed by the actuaries. I feel that rapid streaming operations may be a situation where additional technology would be needed to provide for a robust solution.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Scales
• Highly available

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Constantly changing costs
• Log visibility

Incentivized

It's a great tool in terms of user experience.

Incentivized

From the RightStart Program to the Customer Success team to technical support, Alation has it all covered. They respond quickly and expertly to answer my questions and fix my problems.

Incentivized

We have utilized Cloudera support quite frequently and are very satisfied with the capability and responsiveness of that team. Often, the new features delivered with the platform give us an opportunity to mature the way we're doing things, and the support team have been valuable in developing those new patterns.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

IBM's offering of the Cloud Pak for Data has been a moving target and difficult to compare to Cloudera Data Platform. We have implemented our solution on Amazon Web Services, which appears to be supported by IBM at this point, but the migration would be very expensive for us to endeavor.

Incentivized

• Provides a place where people can go to find things
• When we first implemented, someone was concerned that people would now see what a mess our data environment was. I consider that a feature. We can't clean up if we can't see what we have.

Incentivized

• Reduced operational costs
• Speed to market

Incentivized