Alation Data Catalog vs. ObservePoint

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

Incentivized

ObservePoint is a great tool for automating page testing and standardizing campaigns to observe accurate customer insights. You can identify customer mapping journey. They also help in data protection and insights which are very important and essential these days. They should work more on easy interface designs. Overall, it is the best.

• 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

• The UI for ObservePoint is intuitive and robust. This makes training new engineers and using the product easy and productive.
• All Audit exports are formatted as tab delimited text files making the data easy to analyze and manipulate in a Spreadsheet or database.
• The list of tag vendors that are discoverable is comprehensive making it easy to interrogate most any tagging implementation.
• Standard reporting within the UI is robust and easy to consume.

• 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

• Page details, although interesting, are not very useful as the data is too granular and not possible to integrate with other analytics data for insights.
• Some of the custom tagging may be a little complicated, so sometimes we need an engineer or an ObservePoint tech to help us out.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

ObservePoint has a robust solution that is well supported and is continually innovating to meet new business and technology needs.

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.

It's easy to navigate and learn. The reporting and output are intuitive and robust features for finding and identifying actionable insight.

I've only experienced one system availability issue in the 3 years we've been using it.

Sometimes it can get a bit slow when auditing particularly huge sites but recent upgrades in infrastructure have done a lot to mitigate this behavior.

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.

Incentivized

Support is very strong indeed and has been consistent over the last 4 years. They are also friendly and tag nerds like me!

Instructor was knowledgeable and delivered the content well.

It's easy to find the information you need when you need it and it is easy to consume.

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.

Incentivized

Start with small audits until you have determined what you might want to filter out.

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

I have not used any other product other than ObservePoint for my requirements. there are a number of features for which it has proved helpful. Technology Governance ensures our data collection tools and processes are executing as planned, so our organization can make better decisions based on better data and so on

Incentivized

I have not reached an unreasonable product limitation as of yet.

• 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.

Incentivized

• ObservePoint has helped us quickly (within minutes) catch when a process or pathing on the website breaks, which allows us to fix it quickly. Whether technical/dev or analytics issues, without ObservePoint, they could have been undetected for weeks.

Incentivized