

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud and Alation Data Catalog compete in the data management and data governance category. Alation Data Catalog appears to have the upper hand due to its strong focus on search capabilities and user collaboration.
Features: Informatica IDMC empowers businesses with seamless data integration, comprehensive MDM functionalities, and a flexible architecture supporting multiple domains. Alation Data Catalog stands out with exceptional search capabilities, powerful data discovery tools, and a commitment to enterprise-wide data democratization.
Room for Improvement: Informatica IDMC needs to enhance its user interface, improve customization options, and simplify SAP integration while addressing performance issues and improving documentation. Alation Data Catalog can strengthen its end-to-end data lineage and governance features and improve integration with tools like Power BI.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Informatica IDMC offers versatile deployment models including on-premises and hybrid options, maintaining strong yet improvable customer support. Alation Data Catalog is praised for its support staff but requires better issue resolution and faster deployment options.
Pricing and ROI: Informatica IDMC uses a pay-as-you-go model based on data and processing units, seen as expensive but offers high ROI through enhanced data management. Alation Data Catalog provides flexible pricing models emphasizing long-term ROI through improved data governance despite facing price scrutiny.
We have seen a return on investment, having saved close to 10.5% of our costs, with expected ROI growing yearly by about 17%.
Instead of going into Google or consulting a colleague, I can just go to Alation Data Catalog, search there, and understand everything by myself.
Leadership prefers to utilize third-party tools, such as Snowflake, which has both storage and ELT features.
The stability and performance remain issues.
Compared to Collibra Catalog, where the value is noticeable within six months.
Some of them have dragged on for six months, which is much longer than we would ever want some support issues to go on.
we have defined several SLAs that have resolved critical issues and incidents with excellent support.
we have been able to contact them, and they have been able to help us whenever we have had issues
Due to the tool's maturity limitations, solutions are not always simple and often require workarounds.
Even after going out of service support, they still reached back to me whenever I raised tickets.
We expect more responsive assistance because they have the expertise since Informatica is their tool, but I don't see enough expertise on the Informatica support side.
As data sizes grow, we can also scale categorizations, calibrations, and the types of data we ingest and catalog through this tool.
Alation Data Catalog's scalability is really good since everything is cloud and everything gets pulled into the system via Snowflake and DBT automatically.
Alation Data Catalog's scalability has met our needs as our data and user base has grown.
I have used the product over multiple systems and was able to write reports for large data sets without any performance issues.
As a SaaS platform, IDMC is quite scalable and provides complete flexibility.
There are many options available, and the licensing model is quite good, supporting our needs effectively.
It has never gone down when we wanted to access it.
Alation Data Catalog has been stable for me, as I haven't seen much downtime.
From my experience, Alation Data Catalog is stable.
Stability is crucial because IDMC holds business-critical data, and it needs to be available all the time for business users.
There are substantial stability issues with Informatica Cloud Data Quality on the cloud.
I find the stability to be good, with occasional restarts required every two to three months due to glitches.
The platform needs improvement in integrating with BI tools, reducing manual efforts, and facilitating a smooth connection.
Additionally, bringing in AI capabilities to automate tracking and labeling can optimize how we handle data information levels.
Alation Data Catalog can be improved by enhancing their lineage capabilities to make it easier for us as users to search the lineage without having to use the Alation Data Catalog user interface.
The tool needs to mature in terms of category-specific attributes or dynamic attributes.
The current solution requires code-writing and tweaking, while other solutions offer material-level matches.
If the development interface could be optimized to have fewer modules, it would be greatly beneficial.
Collibra is a little bit expensive than Alation, but I presented the benefits of having that platform, so that little bit of money was not a big deal.
Discussions with the vendor partners provided a detailed breakdown of costs and how they can be reduced over time.
It ranges from a quarter million to a couple of million a year.
Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services is affordable for my specific use cases, with the pricing being rated three or four on a scale where one is very cheap.
Regarding pricing, compared to other tools I have worked with, Informatica offers competitive pricing, which I find not high in terms of starting strategy.
It was the only data catalog tool where I could save and even create SQL queries.
Importantly, we establish a single source of truth, centralizing metadata and standardizing definitions, which minimizes confusion and helps with consistent data use across the organization.
My stakeholders can find relevant data assets quickly using a Google search without needing technical jargon, reducing the time spent searching for data.
The platform's ability to pull in data from other platforms without the need for an additional integration tool enhances its appeal.
The connectors serve as the main functionality, making data integration processes more efficient by saving time and effort.
We could run data quality rules as part of Service Bus, which ensured the integrity of customer information before it was entered into our database.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) | 5.3% |
| Alation Data Catalog | 4.0% |
| Other | 90.7% |

| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 4 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 2 |
| Large Enterprise | 15 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 51 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 27 |
| Large Enterprise | 153 |
Alation pioneered the data catalog market and is now leading its evolution into a platform for a broad range of data intelligence solutions including data search & discovery, data governance, lineage, stewardship, analytics, and digital transformation.
Thanks to its powerful Behavioral Analysis Engine, inbuilt collaboration capabilities, and open interfaces, Alation combines machine learning with human insight to successfully tackle even the most demanding challenges in data and metadata management. With Alation, analysts are empowered to search, query and collaborate on their data to achieve faster, more accurate insights.
Trusted by 400+ enterprises worldwide like Salesforce, Nasdaq, LinkedIn, Finnair, and Cisco.
Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) offers seamless integration of master data management, data quality, and data integration with a cloud-native architecture supporting multiple data management styles, optimizing data governance through metadata management.
IDMC enhances data synchronization and mapping tasks, utilizing a broad range of connectors to interact efficiently with data sources. Its precise address validation via AddressDoctor and intuitive navigation bolster user empowerment, delivering agility, scalability, and security in data governance. Despite its strengths, areas like ease of use, SAP integration, and reporting could benefit from enhancements. Connectivity issues and workflow complexities are noted, needing improvements in performance, support, and licensing cost. Users demand expanded ETL capabilities, real-time processing, and broader data source support to address growing data needs.
What are the key features of IDMC?In industries such as banking, healthcare, and telecom, IDMC is implemented for data integration, cloud migration, and enhancing data quality. Its capabilities are crucial for metadata management, lineage tracking, and real-time processing, ensuring high data quality and streamlined operations.
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