Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Alation
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
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.N/A
data.world
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
data.world in Austin offers their metadata management solution, an enterprise data catalog, allowing users to create reusable, extensible data and analysis. Capture context and knowledge as teams work, so it’s easy to understand, check, and build on what they produce.N/A
Informatica MDM & 360 Applications
Score 5.4 out of 10
N/A
Informatica MDM is an enterprise master data management solution that competes directly with IBM's InfoSphere and Oracle's Siebel UCM product.Informatica MDM and the company's 360 applications present a multidomain solution with flexibility to support any master data domain and relationship—whether on-premises, in the cloud, or both.N/A
Pricing
Alation Data Catalogdata.worldInformatica MDM & 360 Applications
Editions & Modules
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Alationdata.worldInformatica MDM & 360 Applications
Free Trial
YesNoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Alation Data Catalogdata.worldInformatica MDM & 360 Applications
Considered Multiple Products
Alation
Chose Alation Data Catalog
Alation's implementation seemed easier, and their team seemed more responsive and willing to work with our needs. The product and Alation as a company met more of our needs than the others.
Chose Alation Data Catalog
Additionally GCP data catalog (not on the listed selection options)

Alation had a far more feature rich product, that connected well to our data architecture. None of the other tools at the time supported a connection to Kafka which is fundamental to our data processing.
data.world

No answer on this topic

Informatica MDM & 360 Applications
Chose Informatica MDM & 360 Applications
After evaluating solutions from several vendors, the team decided to use Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog to classify and document data from its Cloudera cloud data warehouse and other critical sources. With better documentation of datasets in one central place, Banco ABC …
Best Alternatives
Alation Data Catalogdata.worldInformatica MDM & 360 Applications
Small Businesses

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Medium-sized Companies
ER/Studio
ER/Studio
Score 9.9 out of 10
ER/Studio
ER/Studio
Score 9.9 out of 10
Informatica Customer 360 for Salesforce
Informatica Customer 360 for Salesforce
Score 8.1 out of 10
Enterprises
ER/Studio
ER/Studio
Score 9.9 out of 10
ER/Studio
ER/Studio
Score 9.9 out of 10
Winshuttle
Winshuttle
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Alation Data Catalogdata.worldInformatica MDM & 360 Applications
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(17 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(20 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(2 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Alation Data Catalogdata.worldInformatica MDM & 360 Applications
Likelihood to Recommend
Alation
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
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data.world
Well suited
  • For quickly discovering, preparing, and sharing relevant data from a wide range of
    sources.
  • Easily managing numerous file formats.
  • For contributing and discussing data in one place to aid fast, efficient collaboration.
  • For joining datasets from many sources.
  • Integrating datasets with other platforms.
Less appropriate
  • For full data management.
  • For those unfamiliar with database concepts and SQL.
  • Very limited chart builder
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Informatica
It is a robust software with great management and data model. It can be difficult to learn how to use and deploy the first time but the mapping and features work very well and have optimized our productivity and cost savings. We can customize reports, create rules and integrate with other applications. Overall I recommend it.
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Pros
Alation
  • 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.
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data.world
  • Ingest data from almost any source
  • Join disparate datasets
  • Integrate with other platforms
  • Create subsets of data and share across teams
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Informatica
  • This program raises us to a professional level where we have better versatility to control all the media of my work and have a correct response for each scenario.
  • It is essential to be right about the destination and development of my data, Informatica MDM is here to simplify all these processes for its users.
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Cons
Alation
  • 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.
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data.world
  • Organize queries/datasets by categories
  • Allow data edits for admins
  • Requires knowledge of SQL - visual SQL builder would help with accessibility
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Informatica
  • It is unfortunate how this program has a couple of limitations in terms of insertions; it does not have the ability to agglomerate and archive the data in real-time by groups.
  • To have automation functions, the program is very limited in performing one task at a time, compared to other systems that perform functions simultaneously.
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Likelihood to Renew
Alation
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
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data.world
No answers on this topic
Informatica
Supporting well in managing our huge customer base and managing the customer hierarchies well aligned with transactional processes
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Usability
Alation
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.
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data.world
It's a very user-friendly platform for those familiar with database concepts and SQL. Documentation is extensive but for those with no prior knowledge it can be daunting. The lack of ability to organize queries and datasets by category can also be frustrating and sometimes difficult to navigate.
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Informatica
Strong Customer MDM capabilities for de-duplication, merging, golden record, exposing customer master data. Strong Integration capabilities
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Support Rating
Alation
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.
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data.world
Support has always been excellent.
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Informatica
I'm not sure since I never used support. My colleagues never had any issues with it, therefore my rating would be an 8 with a certain range of uncertainty.
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Implementation Rating
Alation
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.
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data.world
No answers on this topic
Informatica
The integrator did a fair job and even though Business Change Management was complex, it was well concluded on time
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Alternatives Considered
Alation
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.
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data.world
I haven't looked at any other products.
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Informatica
Informatica MDM has proven it's worth in the organization by driving the revenue growth. It saves our lot of time by filtering out duplicate values and helps in solving critical business problems. It is very helpful when we deal with a lot of data. Apart from this we can populate data on various third party integration which is most useful case
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Return on Investment
Alation
  • 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.
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data.world
  • Minimized the organizational reliance on Excel & email
  • Provides more effective validation & standardization
  • Allows staff easy access to data
  • Slow adoption across the organization due to learning curve
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Informatica
  • I cannot speak to this for 2 reasons. 1. I am not privy to the financials associated with this implementation or the previous one. 2. We have not hit our 'go-live' for this implementation yet to compare it's performance to our previous solution.
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ScreenShots

Alation Screenshots

Screenshot of Alation Intelligent Search, which helps to democratize access to enterprise data and foster a robust data culture.Screenshot of a display of end-to-end lineage to understand data flows, relationships, health, and impact analysis.Screenshot of where users can access the privacy policies. This helps everyone in an organization to make data-driven decisions while also ensuring compliance and security.