Alation

Score8.6 out of 10

49 Reviews and Ratings

What is Alation?

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.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

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.

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Screenshot of Alation Intelligent Search, which helps to democratize access to enterprise data and foster a robust data culture.

Lokesh Venkatesh View profile

Senior Data Science in Information Technology at Discover (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Alation has been helpful in improving how our team discovers and documents data. The platform makes it easier to find relevant datasets, understand definitions, and work with more confidence. One of the biggest benefits is that it reduces the time spent searching for relevant information. There is a learning curve in the beginning, but overall, it is a valuable tool for data cataloging and governance. I would recommend it to teams looking to improve data accessibility and organization.

Pros

Data discovery.
Documentation

Cons

Improved search accuracy.
Easier navigation flow.
More current metadata.

Return on Investment

Reduced search time.
Faster Onboarding.
Better governance.

Usability

Other Software Used

Snowflake, Tableau Desktop

Thomas Janssen

Head of Data Architecture and Governance at Judo Bank (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Alation is the principal data governance platform and serves as a technical enabler for our data risk management framework and compliance obligations. It is primarily used by data stewards and technical teams to document our critical data elements, which are then linked to physical data dictionaries, data lineage, and data quality & usage statistics.

Pros

Automated Data Lineage
Mature data governance capabilities
Customisable templates to meet specific customer needs
Ability to integrate with third party tools & platforms

Cons

Ability to maintain data in bulk
Data quality capabilities a key vendor focus but not yet fully matured
Nascent (agentic) AI integration

Return on Investment

Ability to operate DG function with comparatively low headcount
Ability to reduce effort on audit & compliance responses
Faster turnaround of project discovery through automated impact assessments

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Cloudera Data Platform, Precisely Data360 DQ+, CluedIn, Experian Aperture Data Studio, Soda, Talend Data Catalog and Ataccama ONE

Other Software Used

Snowflake, Ataccama ONE, Microsoft Power BI, Azure Databricks

Verified User

Professional in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Alation is used in our organization as a way to enable users to find trusted data. Like any other organization, many data objects can have similar names so a data catalog is needed to make metadata easy to curate and simple to find and understand. The scope of our use case is any consumable data...raw form direct from data sources, prepared reports and dashboards.

Pros

Bulk curation- Alation makes it easy for a data steward to quickly upload a data dictionary. It's also super simple to find dozens of data objects which the steward wants to associate themselves to.
Implementation- Like any other solution, an investment of time is required to configure the product and your environment. What Alation Data Catalog does well is allowing different admin roles to easily configure the catalog and even customize fields needed by our consumers. Getting to value is super fast with Alation.

Cons

Lineage- only table level lineage is included as standard. To view column level lineage, you have to pay extra to unlock. I felt this could have been communicated better earlier in the process.
Conversations- this is one of the best selling points of the tool but what is lacking is a quick and easy way for an admin to monitor conversations. Sure you can run custom queries to see which questions haven't been addressed but I feel this should be part of the built-in reporting.

Return on Investment

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.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Collibra Data Intelligence Cloud and Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog

Other Software Used

Microsoft Teams, Atlassian Confluence, monday.com

Verified User

Employee in Engineering (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Alation Data Catalog enables trust in data for all of the enterprise. Users can easily explore, understand and use data. Where there is ambiguity users can reach out to SME's and engage in a discussion to clear up any misunderstandings.
As the enterprise moves towards treating data like a product Alation Data Catalog allows the business to group, uplift and share Data Products for maximum reusibility

Pros

Simple context driven search
Data Product Marketplace
Agentic forward product

Cons

Agentic driven uplift
Integration with Github to extract code and allow better metadata

Return on Investment

Allowed the business to uplift hundreds of tables and schemas into data products

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Snowflake

Other Software Used

AWS Glue, Apache Spark, Apache Airflow

Miriam Barberena View profile

Data Governance Analyst in Information Technology at NI (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Alation for visibility into the tables, views, and dashboards across our data platforms, adding metadata to help users find the best data for their needs. We also use the Business Glossary capability to provide a centralized, searchable place that promotes a common business language. It includes definitions, business rules, some concept diagrams, and links to additional context. And we use articles to provide additional context, best practices, and links to training.

Pros

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.

Cons

Term tables are not yet in the Alation Analytics area. This makes it difficult to manage the creation of terms in the various business glossaries.
We've had some issues with the connectors, but Alation has been helpful in trying to get them to work.
The BI area is not as robust as the rdbms area. Tableau dashboards are listed as folders which can be confusing for users.

Most Important Features

Search
Automated synching with data sources
Customization
Bulk updating

Return on Investment

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.