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."
"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 platform's most valuable features are workflow automation, automated business metadata tagging, technical metadata tagging, and data integration with data quality tools or platforms."
"The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature."
"We can customize templates based on our use cases."
"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 product has helped us save both time and money."
"From my experience and customer feedback, one of the most valuable features of Microsoft Purview is ease of use, especially for content hosted within Microsoft 365 and Azure. I also like that the pricing model for the solution is reasonable."
"I really like the entire system for auto-labeling content. It's a very refined system. I use the Keyword Query Language to define refined string-based metadata, and then I can really go deep into the specific data with the specific properties labeled in such and such a way."
"It is designed to seamlessly connect to various data sources, which is particularly beneficial for our customers who primarily use Microsoft technologies."
"Microsoft Purview's primary benefit lies in safeguarding sensitive and confidential data, thereby mitigating the risk of internal data exfiltration."
"The best part is that I can create classifications per my requirements. I use it to classify multiple platforms like AWS, GCP, Azure, and different file sharing systems."
"I think Purview does as good a job...I'll say that it is as stable as the data governance maturity that exists within an organization. It can't be more stable than that."
"The data lineage feature stands out. It tracks where the data comes from and any changes made."
"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."
"The interface is not user-friendly."
"The product's data governance features need improvement."
"Alation Data Catalog does not provide end-to-end data lineage."
"The tool's domain model needs to be changed."
"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."
"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."
"Two features are unsupported—custom insights and the DLP component—that would be beneficial to me as a consultant and for the customer in terms of security and monitoring. Regarding security, DLP would provide a more granular level of data masking. Custom insights would offer more detailed monitoring and alerts that can notify customers of failures or anything requiring urgent action."
"Blueprints and landing zones like we have in Azure would be great to see in Purview. The solution could offer a baseline or blueprint of recommended settings for compliance regulations such as GDPR and ISO, which could be applied with a simple switch in the options."
"We have had some issues automating our document management with Power Apps. I haven't been super-disappointed with anything except for Power Apps, which kinda drives me nuts. I think it's because I am a coder who can do things properly, and I keep trying to do things there, but it's not working out the way. The security team is pretty quick. I'm kind of a thorn in their side. I always try to get around stuff. They haven't come to me for anything saying, "Hey, I can't find this information." They're pretty good. Maybe, there's a lack of documentation, but that doesn't seem to be an issue for our team."
"One area for improvement is the detection of data types. This is really important. It has some of that functionality, but I consider it very limited. Maybe they can add some custom programming or machine learning could be particularly useful for the detection of the nature of the data."
"Some of the menu headings may not be easy to understand for some people."
"There are some non-Microsoft file formats that are not supported."
"I would like to have AI functionality on the dashboard to help me analyze and report on the data that we capture using Purview on a daily basis."
"As Microsoft Purview got a little more mature, the deployments got a little more complex, as we were kind of seeing that there are a lot of ways, like there were a hundred ways to do one thing or less."
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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