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Global Data Excellence DEMS vs Varonis Platform vs erwin Data Intelligence comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of erwin Data Intelligence is 1.8%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Global Data Excellence DEMS is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Varonis Platform is 10.6%, up from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Varonis Platform10.6%
erwin Data Intelligence1.8%
Global Data Excellence DEMS0.2%
Other87.4%
Data Governance
 

Featured Reviews

Roy Pollack - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution provides more profound insights into legacy data movements, lineages, and definitions in the short term.
We have loaded over 300,000 attributes and more than 1000 mappings. The performance is slow, depending on the lineage or search. This is supposed to be fixed in the later versions, but we haven't upgraded yet. The integration with various metadata sources, including erwin Data Modeler, isn't smooth in the current version. It took some experimentation to get things working. We hope this is improved in the newer version. The initial version we used felt awkward because Erwin implemented features from other companies into their offering.
Alejandro Subia - PeerSpot reviewer
Great language features allow users to interact with the solution in their own language, and ROI can be seen within weeks
The initial setup is completely straightforward and not complex at all. The system is not invasive. It connects directly through your agents to your database. There's no integration or migration process needed, and it's very simple. The time to go live is minimum. You can have it running in two weeks. Since it's a solution for corporate governance, you need to have a data governance steering committee that's going to drive the project in the organization. One of the key benefits of the solution is that it's directly for the user, so you don't need anyone else for setup but the real user, the person that wants to get the best out of their data. You start with the business owner, and they define their business needs. They see what data you need, how you're going to use it, and what's going to be corrected. Then you start playing the data stewards, and that's all that you need.
Frederic  Delos - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers the ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data
The most effective feature for me is its ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data, provided you have access, to determine whether it's a false positive or a true positive. That's the best thing for me, out of all of it. It's got everything, like other ones, but I like to be able to look at something if I'm doing forensics on the alert and say, "Okay, do I really need to do something with this?" For example, we don't want sensitive data in our OneDrive. So it identifies the sensitive data that's possibly in the OneDrive. And what I can do is look at it and identify whether it's actually sensitive data in Datalert or whether it looks like sensitive data, but I know it's a false positive. If it is a false positive, I can basically say ignore this pattern based on X, Y, and Z, you know, whether it's Redjax or keyword proximity. So I like that. With other tools, I gotta go through a whole process because it's a little bit more complex. Here, I can tag it and bag it in one shot. And the next good time I scan, it slips over it. So it helps in that.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The biggest benefit with erwin DI is that I have a single source of truth that I can send anybody to. If anybody doesn't know the answer we can go back to it. Just having a central location of business rules is good."
"The biggest impact for us is that erwin generates DDL extremely quickly. We're able to pull in metadata, map it to a target, generate DDL to create the tables, and generate SSIS packages. Previously, especially going back 10 to 15 years ago, hundreds of hours had to be spent to manually perform these tasks. This solution completely automates it and gets it 90% done. We can then pass it off to a developer to create the items in SSIS."
"erwin has tremendous capabilities to map right from the business technologies to the endpoint, such as physical entities and physical attributes, from a lineage standpoint."
"Data Intelligence has provided more profound insights into legacy data movements, lineages, and definitions in the short term. We have linked three critical layers of data, providing us with an end-to-end lineage at the column level."
"The data management is, obviously, key in understanding where the data is and what the data is. And the governance can be done at multiple levels. You have the governance of the code sets versus the governance of the business terms and the definitions of those business terms. You have the governance of the business data models and how those business data models are driving the physical implementation of the actual databases. And, of course, you have the governance of the mapping to make sure that source-to-target mapping is done and is being shared across the company."
"There is a wide range of widgets that enables the user to find the proper information quickly. The presentation of information is something very valuable."
"The interface is easy to use. I also like Erwin's automatic data classification and data quality checks."
"They have just the most marvelous reports called mind maps, where whatever you are focused on sits in the middle. They have this wonderful graphic spiderweb that spreads out from there where you can see this thing mapped to other logical bits or physical bits and who's the steward of it. It's very cool and available to your business teams through a portal."
"The most valuable feature is the semantic linguistic artificial intelligence that allows the user to have contact with the system in their natural language."
"It is not only a software solution. It is also based on a direct policy. You get a methodology for data governance and the solution that supports this methodology, which makes things much easier. In addition, this is the only solution right now in the market that has an approach directly directed to the value. By value, I am referring to a tangible value raising money. It has an aspect that is called governed by value. We only focus on the data that is actually bringing a monetary value to your organization or your business process. It is so much simpler working around this system. It has a lot of intelligence embedded in it, and it does a lot of things automatically. It just hooks on to your virtual databases, and you are ready to go in hours. It is an all-in-one solution in which you get data governance, data quality, business transformation, and business excellence."
"It can easily identify unusual behavior or access patterns that may pose a potential threat, while operating as a unified reporting system."
"The solution's classification engine is highly configurable and efficient."
"The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor activities. We can see who accesses data and when files are created and understand what's happening in our environment."
"On the Varonis side, technical support is phenomenal. Their ability to explain is very good, and they seem to be very knowledgeable. When I get an alert that doesn't quite make sense, they dive in there and kind of take me through it. That's very useful and very good. There are some false alerts, but it is better to have a false alert than no alert at all."
"The analytics would have to be our most valuable feature."
"The solution ensures that users have not accidentally shared sensitive information with the wrong people or too many people."
"The telemetry to capture everything and the reports are very easy to configure without having a developer degree."
"Varonis Platform is transparent and captures everything in the environment without impacting the performance. The tool helps us unify data feeds into a single reporting system."
 

Cons

"Everything about Data Intelligence is complex. Though we've used the tool for five years, we're still only using about 30 to 40 percent of its capabilities. It would be helpful if we could customize and simplify the user interface because there are so many redundant things."
"Another area where it can improve is by having BB-Graph-type databases where relationship discovery and relationship identification are much easier."
"We chose to implement on an Oracle Database because we also had the erwin Data Modeler and Web Portal products in-house, which have been set up on Oracle Databases for many years. Sometimes the Oracle Database installation has caused some hiccups that wouldn't necessarily have been caused if we had used SQL Server."
"We still need another layer of data quality assessments on the source to see if it is sending us the wrong data or if there are some issues with the source data. For those things, we need a rule-based data quality assessment or scoring where we can assess tools or other technology stacks. We need to be able to leverage where the business comes in, defining some business rules and have the ability to execute those rules, then score the data quality of all those attributes. Data quality is definitely not what we are leveraging from this tool, as of today."
"The integration with various metadata sources, including erwin Data Modeler, isn't smooth in the current version. It took some experimentation to get things working. We hope this is improved in the newer version. The initial version we used felt awkward because Erwin implemented features from other companies into their offering."
"The data quality assessment requires third-party components and a separate license."
"The solution's Arabic language processing is limited. The results are limited when you use the interface in Arabic."
"There may be some opportunities for improvement in terms of the user interface to make it a little bit more intuitive. They have made some good progress. Originally, when we started, we were on version 9 or 10. Over the last couple of releases, I've seen some improvements that they have made, but there might be a few other additional areas in UI where they can make some enhancements."
"Its interface could be simpler. Sometimes, you need to go through many clicks in order to find something in the software. You need to move from one thing to another to find something."
"It could be nice to have a little update on the menu to get it more up-to-date with current trends and to make it pop out more when you visit the site."
"Varonis requires more access permissions for its core functions compared to competitors, which can be a concern for companies about data safety."
"There is one thing that if I add something manually, I get so many alerts. That's the biggest bad thing."
"It is significantly complex."
"The solution's interface is a little complicated with regard to setting up filters and reports."
"I'd like to see automatic updates for this solution. Currently, it's a manual process to update all the keywords"
"The remediation process can be improved. There will be no existing permission group for the McAfee channel domains. We can create a new permissions group for the required folder."
"I would like it to have cloud integration."
"The GUI should be more functional. There should be a process for connecting through Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable and competitive. When you get into forward and reverse-engineering, the cost could go up. However, if you are a large organization, you would probably be able to access different packages. If, however, you don't need forward and reverse-engineering, then the price is relatively cheap."
"We operate on a yearly subscription and because it is an enterprise license we only have one. It is not dependent on the number of users."
"The licensing cost was very affordable at the time of purchase. It has since been taken over by erwin, then Quest. The tool has gotten a bit more costly, but they are adding more features very quickly."
"Smart Data Connectors have some costs, and then there are user-based licenses. We spend roughly $150,000 per year on the solution. It is a yearly subscription license that basically includes the cost for Smart Data Connectors and user-based licenses. We have around 30 data stewards who maintain definitions, and then we have five IT users who basically maintain the overall solution. It is not a SaaS kind of operation, and there is an infrastructure cost to host this solution, which is our regular AWS hosting cost."
"You buy a seat license for your portal. We have 100 seats for the portal, then you buy just the development licenses for the people who are going to put the data in."
"The price is reasonable, and a subscription is required."
"erwin's pricing was cheaper than its competitors."
"erwin was at a good price. The federal government wouldn't buy something if the pricing wasn't good."
"This is the only company that I've worked with that has a very good way of thinking and placing itself in the buyer's shoes. They offer a pretty competitive price. They understand that the market is different in our economy for different clients, which makes it easier to get the products into the market. If needed, they are pretty open to adjusting the price on the case-by-case scenario. They understand the Latin American market. This is something that has been impossible with other companies or data governance care providers. The prices were much higher for these companies, and they don't understand our economy and market. There are a lot of local taxes that we pay locally to get any solution down here. To give you an idea, there is more or less a 60% increase in the price of any product that comes to Ecuador."
"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."
"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."
"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."
"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."
"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
7%
Non Profit
7%
No data available
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Varonis Platform?
The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor acti...
What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?
Varonis started as an on-premises solution and is transitioning to cloud. It hasn't fully moved yet, which is an area...
What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?
The primary use case for Varonis Platform is data discovery, specifically for discovering sensitive data in our organ...
 

Also Known As

erwin DG, erwin Data Governance
No data available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Oracle, Infosys, GSK, Toyota Motor Sales, HSBC
Givaudan, Firmenich, Bacardi, Manitowoc, Romande Energie, Noveli, BNP Paribas, Michelin, IUCN 
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Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Informatica, Collibra and others in Data Governance. Updated: September 2025.
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