We compared Alation Data Catalog and Microsoft Purview based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
Alation Data Catalog focuses on data discovery, governance, collaboration, pricing, and ROI. The platform offers exceptional customer service but requires improvements in navigation, search functionality, and integration with other tools. On the other hand, Microsoft Purview emphasizes data management, governance, collaboration, pricing, and ROI. Users appreciate its user-friendly interface and integration with Microsoft products but seek enhancements in functionality, user experience, and integration capabilities for more efficient data management.
Features: Alation Data Catalog stands out for its comprehensive data discovery and search capabilities, data governance functionality, and collaborative features. Microsoft Purview excels in effectively managing data assets, offering a comprehensive view of data, and supporting data governance and compliance requirements. Purview is also praised for its user-friendly interface and seamless integration with other Microsoft products and services.
Pricing and ROI: The setup costs for Alation Data Catalog are deemed reasonable and not overly burdensome, while Microsoft Purview offers comparatively lower setup costs. Alation's licensing agreement is seen as flexible and accommodating, while Purview provides versatile licensing options. Both products offer good value for money and competitive pricing., Alation Data Catalog reportedly achieved positive ROI by providing valuable insights, optimizing data management efficiency, eliminating duplication, and increasing collaboration. Microsoft Purview resulted in a positive ROI by enhancing data governance, accelerating analytics, centralizing data, and enabling cost savings and improved decision-making.
Room for Improvement: The Alation Data Catalog requires enhancement in intuitive navigation, search functionality, collaboration features, and integration with other tools. Microsoft Purview needs improvements in functionality, user-friendliness, data classification, search filters, integration, collaboration, and data ingestion processes.
Deployment and customer support: The reviews for Alation Data Catalog indicate that the duration for establishing the tech solution can vary among users, with some taking three months for deployment and an additional week for setup. However, others have reported only a week for both deployment and setup. The context must be considered to accurately evaluate the time required. In contrast, for Microsoft Purview, user feedback suggests that the duration for deploying, setting up, or implementing the solution also varies. Some mentioned three months for deployment and an additional week for setup, implying that both phases should be considered separately. However, there are also users who only required a week for both, indicating that these terms refer to the same period and should not be evaluated independently., The customer service and support of Alation Data Catalog have received positive feedback, with users appreciating the responsive and efficient assistance. Microsoft Purview also offers helpful and responsive customer service to cater to users' needs effectively.
The summary above is based on 49 interviews we conducted recently with Alation Data Catalog and Microsoft Purview users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"We had some of our data science engineers, who had built out some cloud-based data and data products for users. They were spending a lot of their time, up to 30 to 35% of their time, answering questions about the data and helping people understand how to use it. Once they were able to document that information within Alation, they were only focusing on around 5% of the high-value questions that really couldn't be solved through the catalog itself. It freed them up to be more productive, it made their end-users more productive, and it made the adoption rate of their data products rise more quickly because people were able to get to using them."
"We can customize templates based on our use cases."
"Alation Data Catalog's best feature is the SQL query publication."
"Given the relatively low level of maturity, Alation's most relevant feature at the moment is a user interface that's easy to navigate, which helps us find and understand the data. So while Alation has a lot more functionality, our pain point right now is being able to easily find, understand, and trust the information to use it."
"The most valuable features of Alation Data Catalog are the simplicity in onboarding data sources, the security in securing the data sources, and the way the various users of Alation Data Catalog communicate with each other through a messenger."
"The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature."
"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."
"It is critical that Purview delivers data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments. That is the number one reason that people are adopting hybrid and best-of-the-breed approaches. Especially in banking, it is critical because people want to protect, govern, and secure their data. This is one of the first conversations that happens with security and the architecture group on the client side."
"The user interface is highly intuitive and user-friendly."
"The time to onboard is pretty short."
"Microsoft Purview's primary benefit lies in safeguarding sensitive and confidential data, thereby mitigating the risk of internal data exfiltration."
"My favorite Purview feature is auto-scanning. Once we set up Purview, we can automatically scan multiple data sources when new data comes into specific databases, like SQL and Oracle. We don't need to rediscover the new data or do anything manually because it automatically happens."
"I use the tool in projects as a medium to provide information as reports to the stakeholders."
"You can set up automated dates to alert on internal data."
"It starts off with records management, insider risk management, and information protection. And there is the discovery of the clouds, and we can get analytics on that as well, so that we know which user is using which cloud application and for how much time. The Activity explorer tells us which user was transferring out what data at what moment and on which device, including the serial number."
"Alation Data Catalog doesn't support end-to-end lineage. By that, I mean the ability to trace the movement of data from when it first comes into our organization to where it's consumed."
"I know that this has been on their roadmap and they're working on it, but as a whole, there's an untapped reservoir of capabilities within their article features that could be used and built upon."
"Alation Data Catalog does not provide end-to-end data lineage."
"The interface is not user-friendly."
"The product's data governance features need improvement."
"The tool's domain model needs to be changed."
"Alation Data Catalog needs to develop a lot in terms of data governance and would be improved with a built-in interactive data quality solution."
"There are differences when looking at an incident in the M365 portal versus Purview, and the main one is the advanced hunting. In the M365 portal, you can write KQL queries and fetch data. If that was available in Purview, it would be very good."
"Non-Microsoft use cases are not very high. It's limited for now."
"Some of the menu headings may not be easy to understand for some people."
"We've had a few issues with the scanner. It runs perfectly one day, and on another day, it will run the whole night. It's probably related to the rules. If I set some compliance rules and apply the rules to any column, I can't delete it. I have to disable it and reactivate it."
"Another area for improvement is in managing the business glossary terms. If they could provide the same type of method that we use to configure the scan rule sets, that would be helpful. Currently, there is no option like this, so we have to do it manually. Automatic detection would be great."
"Privacy features should be integrated into the core product rather than offered as optional add-ons, as privacy is not a luxury but a fundamental requirement."
"While Purview's data connector platform can ingest information from non-Microsoft data sources, it is slow to do so and the information may become outdated."
"There are some limitations with regard to the lineage of data from different parts of the system."
More Microsoft Purview Data Governance Pricing and Cost Advice →
Alation Data Catalog is ranked 5th in Data Governance with 7 reviews while Microsoft Purview Data Governance is ranked 1st in Data Governance with 48 reviews. Alation Data Catalog is rated 7.8, while Microsoft Purview Data Governance is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Alation Data Catalog writes "The catalog now provides an opportunity for people to come together, to share, and to find". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Purview Data Governance writes "User friendly with good documentation but needs to cover more non-Microsoft use cases". Alation Data Catalog is most compared with Collibra Governance, Informatica Axon, Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog, Collibra Lineage and erwin Data Intelligence by Quest, whereas Microsoft Purview Data Governance is most compared with Collibra Governance, Varonis Platform, Informatica Axon, Microsoft Intune and Collibra Lineage. See our Alation Data Catalog vs. Microsoft Purview Data Governance report.
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