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The Alation Data Intelligence Platform

Alation

Reviews from AWS customer

2 AWS reviews

External reviews

73 reviews
from and

External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.

3-star reviews ( Show all reviews )

    reviewer2774796

Has improved data collaboration and discovery but still needs better workflow configuration

  • November 05, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

The main use case for Alation Data Catalog was to create a one-point reference source of truth for the entire organization. The problem is that there are so many different lines of businesses and functional areas that work in silos, and one organization does not know the data in another organization, even though their data or metadata may be related. Moreover, the same data may be used or consumed by different lines of businesses or functional areas without any collaboration. In data governance, our aim is to bring both the business and IT onto the same page.

The use case for our business is to create a single point inventory of all the technical and business assets and all the metadata onto a single catalog tool, which helps any user across the enterprise be able to search the metadata and perform impact analysis using lineage features to understand the flow of metadata from source to target to the consumption layer via reporting. For that, we utilized Alation Data Catalog.

What is most valuable?

There are so many different tools in the market, but the best features for me are the user-friendly search and discovery. At the search bar at the top, I can find any data asset by just typing my natural language search. When I search using natural language, Alation Data Catalog search discovery surfaces the most popular or trusted data sets, even if I don't know the technical terms. As a business user, I might search for an address or a term like party identifier, but I might not be aware that the technical metadata for that is in a table named t underscore party, containing a column named pty underscore id, which is part of a database or a server with a technical name.

The search feature really helps businesses.

Another strong feature is the automated data lineage, giving us a visual flow of how the metadata is flowing from system A to B to C and if any transformations are taking place. We can also create articles in Alation Data Catalog, which function as pages in SharePoint or Confluence that can be shared with users.

This includes comments and notes, an excellent glossary feature, and tagging capabilities, where Alation Data Catalog automatically suggests tags such as PII to classify metadata. These are the features that stood out for us.

The agenda of data governance is to have positive outcomes, and specifically speaking, we have saved our businesses about thirty to forty percent of analytical research and analysis time compared to previous metrics, highlighting the benefit of having a proper data governance tool in place.

Since trusted data is readily discoverable, users spend less time searching for it and avoid duplicate work, resulting in faster analytics. Moreover, when we establish good data lineage, compliance is easier to meet during audits since data quality issues are detected sooner, leading teams to resolve them faster and gain confidence in their reporting, both for internal and external purposes. These are a couple of the benefits and positive impacts Alation Data Catalog has had on us.

What needs improvement?

One limitation I would mention is that Collibra excels in workflow management, and Alation Data Catalog has some constraints in this area. It would be beneficial if Alation Data Catalog offered more flexible or configurable workflow options.

Additionally, another improvement point would be regarding connectors for scanning metadata. While Alation Data Catalog has many connectors, integrating with legacy or niche systems can be challenging, often requiring data engineers to create extensive API configurations or bridges. It would help if Alation Data Catalog could develop more out-of-the-box connectors and simpler integration workflows to ease the burdens on data engineers.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working in data governance for over six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Alation Data Catalog is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Regarding scalability, Alation Data Catalog supports hybrid architecture, integrating both on-premises and cloud data systems, which enables it to scale as the organizational data footprint grows, allowing us to scan more sources while featuring automated metadata harvesting, capable of handling large volumes of data with robust search and indexing capabilities.

How are customer service and support?

The customer support from Alation Data Catalog is decent. I would rate the customer support an eight out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Collibra and Alation Data Catalog. However, our business and leadership ultimately decided to go with Alation Data Catalog, which is why we use it.

What other advice do I have?

For new users, if we are discussing the advantages of Alation Data Catalog, in the background, we can also map usage tracking, which helps understand the big picture of data governance. When our business wants to measure the impact of Alation Data Catalog, they can view the usage, the number of users, the glossary assets, and the growth of critical business terms over time. While Alation Data Catalog serves as a single source of truth, it helps identify this usage tracking for the business.

Alation Data Catalog also identifies recommended assets, allowing users to suggest or promote certain datasets, building trust within the business regarding the reliability of reports. Additionally, having an inbuilt SQL editor allows users to write, share, and review queries directly within the platform, streamlining analytics collaboration for new users exploring Alation Data Catalog for the first time.

The agenda of a data governance tool is to save a business's money and time. Specifically for Alation Data Catalog, in our business case, we save about thirty to forty percent less time when searching for data assets, meaning data analysts and stewards save that much time, which snowballs into significant ripple effects over weeks and months. This saves time and money, decreasing the chances of incurring millions of dollars in fines in regulated industries, enabling better data governance to mitigate those risks.

As for changes in day-to-day operations and morale, when we have a structured catalog in place and a business philosophy centered around discoverable metadata, we reduce searching time. Having clean, curated data assets helps analysts and data stewards focus more on higher-impact tasks rather than tedious cleaning and curation, boosting employee morale as they no longer have to repeat dull tasks. For example, onboarding times for new analysts have dropped from several months to just a few weeks, helping new hires feel less lost or overwhelmed. Trusted terms used in the business are readily available in the business glossary, complete with clear definitions, policies, and associated datasets, resulting in improved communication and fewer misunderstandings while aligning departments on definitions, thus enhancing company morale.

My advice for others looking into using Alation Data Catalog is to start by asking your business about their goals and needs. Every business and industry is unique, and it is crucial to ensure that any tool meets those specific needs. If you invest in something fancy and expensive but fail to meet the business's requirements, then that investment is wasted, so always focus on what the business requires. I would rate this product a seven out of ten overall.

    PawanpreetSangari

ALLIE AI feature is helpful, but we have had issues setting up the connectors

  • July 01, 2024
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

We try to federate Alation Data Catalog from different parts of the project onto one platform.

What is most valuable?

The solution's most valuable feature is the ALLIE AI feature. The features are generally the same across all data governance tools I've had experience with, including OpenMetadata, Alation, and Collibra.

What needs improvement?

We have had issues setting up the connectors and getting Alation's support team to resolve issues.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Alation Data Catalog for six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Alation Data Catalog provides good stability.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have previously worked with OpenMetadata and Collibra. From my reading and research knowledge, Collibra seems to be more stable on the connectors and security side. I still have to explore Collibra's federation part. Collibra is already FedRAMP certified, whereas Alation Data Catalog is in the process of attaining its FedRAMP certification.

What was our ROI?

We saw a return on investment with Alation Data Catalog on the federation side. We could bring everything to one place for the organization to know about the data assets, and the solution helped us integrate the knowledge.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I don't have all the details on the pricing side, but the solution was more expensive than originally expected.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten.

What other advice do I have?

I haven't explored the solution's data lineage capabilities much. However, I have heard that there are some difficulties with getting the lineage to work, as it doesn't properly pull the information in. The solution provides automation, metadata descriptions, and tags. I would recommend the solution to other users because it's a stable product and an industry leader.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

    Girubakaran Velusamy

Used to query databases, but it is slower than other available tools

  • June 13, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We are using the solution to query databases.

What is most valuable?

The solution is used to query MySQL clients and store data and documentation.

What needs improvement?

It would be good if the tool could show the output from the records while querying.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Alation Data Catalog for one and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Sometimes, the solution's stability was low, but it was mostly fine.

I rate the solution’s stability a six out of ten.

What other advice do I have?

We had no issues integrating the solution with Redshift. Alation Data Catalog is a good tool for analytics, but we need to go for some other tools for reporting. Alation Data Catalog is mostly a tool for querying. We need to integrate it with other third-party tools for reporting.

Redshift, AWS, and MySQL tools are better than Alation Data Catalog for querying purposes. MySQL and Databricks are visually appealing and faster tools than Alation Data Catalog.

Even though Alation Data Catalog is a free tool, we can check other available tools. If other tools perform well, we can choose them over Alation Data Catalog.

Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

    reviewer2266875

Has valuable workflow automation features, but the data migration capabilities could be better

  • February 06, 2024
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the product as a data catalog tool to search for data assets like tables or columns.

What is most valuable?

The platform's most valuable features are workflow automation, automated business metadata tagging, technical metadata tagging, and data integration with data quality tools or platforms.

What needs improvement?

The product's data governance features need improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

Our company has been using Alation Data Catalog for the last three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We encounter a few system outages. However, it might be because we have deployed in on-premises infrastructure. I rate the stability an eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product's data migration from on-premise to cloud infrastructure is not seamless. I rate the scalability a six out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support team takes longer to respond than expected for simple issues.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used a different solution in my previous organization.

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in the initial setup process, but I think it was not that complicated. It took less than a week to complete.

What was our ROI?

Alation Data Catalog generates a return on investment for our organization.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We are evaluating different vendors. In comparison, Alation Data Catalog is not performing that well and is moderately expensive.

What other advice do I have?

Alation Data Catalog has improved discovery by addressing and searching particular data, including systems, tables, and columns. However, it could have been more helpful in the data governance aspect. They are about to introduce more features in that area. Its knowledge community is active; I rate it an eight.

I rate the overall product a seven out of ten.

    Blake C.

Decent tool with helpful features but Cloud functionality still nascent.

  • November 22, 2023
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
Integrations ability and automated lineage
What do you dislike about the product?
Current install of Alation is on prem and only a few years old. Already being pushed to cloud which is good but costs more money and several new features that make Alarion a much more complete tool are only available in new cloud tool and those features are still relatively new and unproven.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Data lineage and certification documentation

    Computer Software

First Impressions

  • November 02, 2023
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
Seems like a great UI and well organized
What do you dislike about the product?
Without data custodians will require a large effort from the team to curate everything
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Data cataloging

    Legal Services

Understanding the value of a data catalog

  • November 02, 2023
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
Support for wide range of platforms to pull in our enterprise data. Ability to customize the end user portal to hide noise from actionable insights
What do you dislike about the product?
Mostly wonder if the effort to maintain an accurate data catalog will be worth the business value of the information
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Standardizing our metric definitions and building trust in our data

    reviewer2281572

The solution enables users to customize templates, but it is expensive, and the interface is not user-friendly compared to some of the other products in the market

  • October 25, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is most valuable?

We can use the tool to put additional information about things. People can go through articles and get detailed knowledge. We can also create queries. We can customize templates based on our use cases. We can use API. We can create forms for the user.

What needs improvement?

It was not very clear how to connect to databases. The interface is not user-friendly. Some things in the interface must be made user-friendly. Some features are quite technical. A non-technical user might find the tool difficult to use.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for one or two months.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I used OvalEdge two years ago. A non-technical person also can use OvalEdge quite easily. It enables users to connect to a database, crawl, and extract the metadata. It was not quite easy to do the same in Alation Data Catalog. OvalEdge is quite user-friendly. We can create rules behind the data and add data dictionaries and glossaries.

In Alation, we can write a complete article for a specific object and link it to different tables and columns so the user can easily navigate to a particular object or table. OvalEdge is cheaper, though.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is a little expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I have gone through the training for Alation Data Catalog. Overall, I rate the product a seven out of ten.

    Government Administration

Powerful and simple to use Metadata Catalog Tool

  • May 23, 2023
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
Ease of Use. Caters for a customised user requirement implementation. Good product support.
What do you dislike about the product?
Not historically focused on UK Public Sector and unawareness of the culture challenges coupled with disparate source system landscape to implementing a Metadata Catalog Tool.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Lack of awareness on what data is available in the organisation, who owns it, who manages it, repeated data discovery exercises for the same data, lack of metadata accuracy, lack of organisational business glossary and management thereof

    Mayank K.

Great tool for analytics

  • March 29, 2022
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
Tool helps in getting the data processing fast and a great user friendly tool
What do you dislike about the product?
It has data limitations capacity. Sometimes does not respond when processing large amount of data.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Tool is similar to other data processing software but data processing is really faster as compared to other softwares
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Its a great differentiated software as compared to other softwares in the market. Very good software when processing large amount of data for ML algorithms.

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