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Alation Data Catalog vs Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alation Data Catalog
Ranking in Data Governance
6th
Ranking in Metadata Management
2nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Informatica Intelligent Dat...
Ranking in Data Governance
2nd
Ranking in Metadata Management
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
185
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (2nd), Data Quality (1st), Business Process Management (BPM) (11th), Business-to-Business Middleware (5th), API Management (8th), Cloud Data Integration (3rd), Test Data Management (3rd), Cloud Master Data Management (MDM) Solutions (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (2nd), Data Masking (2nd), Test Data Management Services (3rd), Product Information Management (PIM) (1st), Data Observability (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 5.9%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) is 5.9%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance
 

Featured Reviews

Brahma Lam - PeerSpot reviewer
Has metadata cataloging features but needs changes in domain model
The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature.  The tool's domain model needs to be changed.  Alation Data Catalog is stable.  The solution is scalable.  Alation Data Catalog's deployment is easy. I rate it a nine out of ten. Deployment takes only two to three hours to complete.…
Saikat Ghosh - PeerSpot reviewer
Match and merge functionality is still the best but cloud version needs more functionality
There are various areas for improvement in IDMC. Enhancements on basic data management functionality and the UI front, such as multiple templates and improved grid views, would be beneficial. Bulk data management features could be improved from the UI perspective to get to the level of the on prem versions of Informatica MDM. The tool needs to mature but missing small but important features, like restricted dynamic attributes functionality, data inheritance rules in master hierachies, identifiers not being passed in jobs is a drawback.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Alation Data Catalog provides a nice interface for connecting to the database, querying the data, and working on it."
"Alation Data Catalog's best feature is the SQL query publication."
"The most valuable feature is cloud integration."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the ALLIE AI feature."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"We can customize templates based on our use cases."
"The tool's most valuable feature is bulk upload. We upload files in CSV or Excel format."
"The staging and hierarchical features are the most valuable."
"Seeing the data in the mapping itself is really nice."
"What I like best about Informatica MDM is its structured, table-based approach. Unlike Reltio, where data is only visible through the UI and cloud-based, the solution allows access to normalized tables. This means I can directly query and see data in each table. For instance, I can easily get all customer details from the customer table. However, for more complex queries, like seeing all customer interactions with the organization, some SQL knowledge is needed to join different tables and retrieve the details."
"It is a very stable solution. I rate its stability a ten out of ten...It is a scalable solution...Informatica Axon's technical support is good."
"The serverless capability and the packaging application of the solution are valuable."
"It provides all the typical MDM capabilities like deduplication and machine survivorship."
"Informatica MDM has data quality, mastering the data's capability."
 

Cons

"The interface is not user-friendly."
"The tool's domain model needs to be changed."
"We have had issues setting up the connectors and getting Alation's support team to resolve issues."
"It would be good if the tool could show the output from the records while querying."
"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 needs to develop a lot in terms of data governance and would be improved with a built-in interactive data quality solution."
"Data observability within Alation would be incredibly helpful for addressing these challenges"
"Although the solution performs far better in terms of data cataloging, its data governance capabilities need improvement."
"It could be a bit more intuitive, rather than technically complex."
"This is a costly solution. We have several customers who evaluate it but then look for other solutions because of the cost. At present, Informatica MDM comes as an on-premises or cloud-based solution. I would like to see them offer a SaaS-based MDM model. I think they are working on it."
"Informatica's support understands the solution, but they lack the experience we need for our use case. That was one thing that we prioritized when we started searching for this kind of solution."
"In terms of what could be improved, they need to create a rules repository. Business rules for the attributes that you have, keeping them in that central repository, and governance of them is something which Axon is lacking a bit. The Informatica Data Quality tool actually caters to that, so that's probably why they have not built that up in the Axon, but it is definitely something that can be built in to this product, as well."
"It could be improved by including a buffer that saves data when there is a connectivity issue."
"A general improvement in icons and the virtual interface would be good."
"The scalability is tough."
"There's certainly room for improvement. One crucial area is generating detailed reports on file statuses. Presently, this is represented visually, often as graphs or charts. Such reporting could offer comprehensive insights into the areas that demand attention and further scrutiny."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"A three-year agreement is better than a one-year rolling 12-month agreement from a price point of view. I'd recommend looking at a three-year deal because you can't stand up a catalog and produce value in 12 months."
"The platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market."
"The solution is a little expensive."
"I don't have all the details on the pricing side, but the solution was more expensive than originally expected."
"It is cost effective and an easily accessible tool."
"It's an expensive solution."
"I rate the product's pricing a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price, and ten is high price."
"The product has a high price point."
"I rate the licensing cost of Informatica MDM a five out of ten."
"Our customers sometimes are able to negotiate a much better price for Informatica Cloud Data Integration based on their relationship with the vendor."
"You can purchase licenses for this solution at different intervals. For example, annually or every three years. They recently changed their terms for licensing and now it is more flexible."
"A yearly subscription is paid based on the number of people using the solution. Price-wise, it falls under the medium range since it is neither very costly nor too cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alation Data Catalog?
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alation Data Catalog?
The price difference between Alation Data Catalog and Collibra was not significant. Collibra is a little bit expensive than Alation, but I presented the benefits of having that platform, so that li...
What needs improvement with Alation Data Catalog?
Alation Data Catalog is not user-friendly for business users. Its user experience is comparable to a Wikipedia page, lacking good visualization. In a fast-paced world, we need to grasp information ...
How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica Cloud Data Integration?
Azure Data Factory is a solid product offering many transformation functions; It has pre-load and post-load transformations, allowing users to apply transformations either in code by using Power Q...
Which Informatica product would you choose - PowerCenter or Cloud Data Integration?
Complex transformations can easily be achieved using PowerCenter, which has all the features and tools to establish a real data governance strategy. Additionally, PowerCenter is able to manage huge...
What are the biggest benefits of using Informatica Cloud Data Integration?
When it comes to cloud data integration, this solution can provide you with multiple benefits, including: Overhead reduction by integrating data on any cloud in various ways Effective integration ...
 

Also Known As

Alation
ActiveVOS, Active Endpoints, BPM, Address Verification, Persistent Data Masking, Cloud Test Data Management, PIM, , Enterprise Data Catalog, Data Integration Hub, Cloud Data Integration, Data Quality, Cloud API and App Integration
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
The Travel Company, Carbonite
Find out what your peers are saying about Alation Data Catalog vs. Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
859,579 professionals have used our research since 2012.