Alation Data Catalog vs Microsoft Purview comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 6, 2024

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.

To learn more, read our detailed Alation Data Catalog vs. Microsoft Purview Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"We can customize templates based on our use cases.""The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature.""Alation Data Catalog's best feature is the SQL query publication.""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.""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 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.""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."

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"The audit log has been a lifesaver for a lot of reasons. Historically, when using SaaS products, there were always questions about how the audit was going and whether we were sufficient out of the box. Purview has many capabilities available through centralized reporting that provide a view of a specific segment.""The ability to classify data quickly and effortlessly is arguably Microsoft Purview's most valuable feature.""It gives you the opportunity to know your data and apply policies around it. If those policies are flouted, you can always track what's happening. You have options such as alerting the person who is committing that action, or you can take automatic action by blocking, for example, an email that is been sent externally. It's very useful.""Instead of having to manually write down which tables and columns exist and then describe them, you can do that process in one go, by simply connecting to a source. That's a huge time-saver and a great benefit of Purview.""MIP also provides strong information rights management settings, such as the ability to specify who has access to content and at what time.""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.""Data authentication enables us to classify documents based on whether they should be restricted for internal consumption or permitted for external sharing.""I don't know if I've gotten much value out of Purview personally, but our security team loves it. Our biggest concern is leakage or theft of our data because we have a lot of PII and stuff that has not been released. We like the insights Purview provides and the way the solution can track and manage things. I'd say that was probably their favorite piece of it so far. From everything the security team has told me, the policy management and DLP features are working spectacularly."

More Microsoft Purview Pros →

Cons
"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.""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.""Alation Data Catalog does not provide end-to-end data lineage.""The product's data governance features need improvement.""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.""The tool's domain model needs to be changed."

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"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.""I have some concerns about the separation of roles in Purview from the Microsoft tenant, as well as how they interact with the security portal and endpoint manager.""Support should be improved in the form of good documentation and video lessons where a person can check things out. There is a community, but it takes a lot of time if we want to get an answer to a question.""There is room for improvement when it comes to Purview's data connector platform in supporting ingestion from non-Microsoft data sources.""There are negatives to the compliance aspect of Purview in that you get a lot of false positives with some of the native scanning and rules in the platform. A lot of them need tweaking to get a more realistic handle on what data there is.""One drawback of Microsoft Purview, though it's beneficial and easy to use, is that when you start plugging in connectors for third-party sources when setting the solution up for data collection, it becomes a bit more tricky.""The Microsoft Purview data connector platform, which supports ingestion from non-Microsoft data sources, can be somewhat complex.""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."

More Microsoft Purview Cons →

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 solution is a little expensive."
  • "The platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market."
  • More Alation Data Catalog Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The pricing is moderate. It's not too expensive, but it's not the most competitive."
  • "Microsoft Purview is the best option I have encountered when it comes to price. Maybe some of my information is outdated, but Microsoft offered it so that you could use it almost without paying."
  • "There is some competition out there, but the other solutions are quite expensive. They are enterprise tools that are a bit more mature but the license costs $100,000 for some of them. Purview is pay-per-use and a lot of companies are interested in that."
  • "Aside from the complexity of the pricing model, the price itself is realistic. Features like AI components and automatic classification require additional licenses. Still, anyone can start using Purview with a basic E3 license if they're using Microsoft 365 and grow with additional licenses as needed. Overall, we're satisfied with the price."
  • "Its pricing is good in terms of the features that they are providing, but there are many competitors in the market who can easily provide you with similar services at a lesser cost."
  • "The categorization within the licensing could be improved. There are a lot of solutions within Microsoft Purview. If the licensing could be a bit clearer and the solutions could be better categorized according to function and across multiple environments, that would be excellent. The licensing is very confusing."
  • "Price-wise, I think it's very generous and accessible to not just enterprises but small to medium-sized companies as well. I think it's very fair in terms of how they break apart the storage and the actual computing, and that makes it very accessible. So, that is a very big plus for Purview."
  • "Some people find the tier licensing system complicated, but it offers a lot of value for money if we use the features."
  • More Microsoft Purview Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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.
    Top Answer:The platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market.
    Top Answer:The product's data governance features need improvement.
    Top Answer:It is designed to seamlessly connect to various data sources, which is particularly beneficial for our customers who primarily use Microsoft technologies.
    Top Answer:Currently, the licensing differs for the governance side compared to the risk and compliance side. On the governance side, the charges are based on the usage of Purview, including the data map, data… more »
    Top Answer:Data quality has been a highly requested feature among customers. While it was initially scheduled for release in December last year, I anticipate that this feature will be available soon this year. I… more »
    Ranking
    5th
    out of 57 in Data Governance
    Views
    8,947
    Comparisons
    5,807
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    317
    Rating
    7.0
    1st
    out of 57 in Data Governance
    Views
    26,764
    Comparisons
    13,202
    Reviews
    45
    Average Words per Review
    1,368
    Rating
    7.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Alation
    MS Azure Purview
    Learn More
    Overview

    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.

    Microsoft Purview is a unified data governance solution that helps you understand all of your on-premises, multi cloud, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) data and maintain control over its usage. With the Microsoft Purview solution, you can create a detailed, up-to-date map of your data landscape with sensitive data classification, automated data discovery, and end-to-end data lineage. Not only does it enable data curators to easily secure your data, but it also allows data consumers to find valuable, trustworthy data.

    Microsoft Azure Purview is designed with:

    • Data Map: Microsoft Purview Data Map provides the foundation for data discovery and effective data governance. Azure Purview Data Map is a cloud-native PaaS service that captures metadata about enterprise data present in analytics and operation systems on premises and in the cloud.

    • Data Catalog: Microsoft Purview Data Catalog finds trusted data sources by browsing and searching your data assets. The data catalog aligns your assets with business terms and data classification to identify data sources.

    • Data Insights: Microsoft Purview Data Insights gives you an overview of your data estate to help you discover what kinds of data you have and where.

    Microsoft Purview Features

    Microsoft Purview has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Automated data discovery, lineage identification, and data classification
    • Insights into the location and movement of sensitive data across your entire data estate
    • Unified map of your data assets and their relationships for more effective data governance
    • Glossary with business and technical search terms to aid data discovery

    Microsoft Purview Benefits

    Some of the benefits of using Microsoft Azure Purview include:

    • Automate and manage metadata from hybrid sources.
    • Classify data using built-in and custom classifiers and Microsoft Information Protection sensitivity labels.
    • Label sensitive data consistently across SQL Server, Azure, Microsoft 365, and Power BI.
    • Easily integrate all your data systems using Apache Atlas APIs.
    • Search for data using technical or business terms.
    • Easily understand data by browsing associated technical, business, semantic, and operational metadata.
    • Quickly identify the sensitivity level of data.
    • Scan your Power BI environment and Azure Synapse Analytics workspaces with a few clicks.
    • Automatically publish all discovered assets and lineage to the Purview Data Map.
    • Connect Microsoft Azure Purview to Azure Data Factory instances to automatically collect data integration lineage.
    • Quickly determine which analytics and reports already exist without reinventing the wheel.

    Reviews from Real Users

    PeerSpot reviewer Kelly B., Solution Specialist at LobsterPot Solutions, says, “We're building a new system from scratch for our clients and wanted to include data governance. Their solution is hosted in Azure and it seemed logical to go with something that fits with that. Purview has a pretty good interface and I'm satisfied with what the solution does and the price it's being sold at. It integrates well with Azure technologies.” She also adds, “The initial setup was very easy, that's part of the appeal.”

    Sample Customers
    Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
    Information Not Available
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Insurance Company14%
    Government14%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Computer Software Company11%
    University11%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise63%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise72%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business34%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise46%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise66%
    Buyer's Guide
    Alation Data Catalog vs. Microsoft Purview
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Alation Data Catalog vs. Microsoft Purview and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Alation Data Catalog is ranked 5th in Data Governance with 5 reviews while Microsoft Purview is ranked 1st in Data Governance with 47 reviews. Alation Data Catalog is rated 7.8, while Microsoft Purview is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Alation Data Catalog writes "A stable data catalog solution that helps onboard data sources". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Purview writes " A data governance solution that efficiently breaks down barriers to sharing information while making it easy to access and understand data". Alation Data Catalog is most compared with Collibra Governance, Informatica Axon, Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog, Collibra Lineage and IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog, whereas Microsoft Purview is most compared with Collibra Governance, Varonis Platform, Informatica Axon, Collibra Lineage and Microsoft Intune. See our Alation Data Catalog vs. Microsoft Purview report.

    See our list of best Data Governance vendors.

    We monitor all Data Governance reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.