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Varonis Platform vs erwin Data Intelligence by Quest comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

erwin Data Intelligence by ...
Ranking in Data Governance
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Varonis Platform
Ranking in Data Governance
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (10th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (5th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (4th), Compliance Management (7th), Ransomware Protection (11th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of erwin Data Intelligence by Quest is 2.0%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Varonis Platform is 10.7%, up from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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.
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

"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."
"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."
"The interface is easy to use. I also like Erwin's automatic data classification and data quality checks."
"The solution gives us data lineage which means we can see an impact if we make a change. The ability for us to have that in this company is brilliant because we used to have 49 data stewards from some 23 different groups within six major departments. Each one of those was a silo unto itself. The ability to have different glossaries — but all pointed to the same key terms, key concepts, or key attributes — has made life really simple."
"Mind map... is a really good feature because it is very helpful in seeing which column's tables are related. Also, you can flag them with "sensitive data" and other indicators. You can also customize your own features for the mind map. That was another very robust feature."
"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."
"We use the codeset mapping quite a bit to match value pairs to use within the conversion as well. Those value pair mappings come in quite handy and are utilized quite extensively. They then feed into the automation of the source data extraction, like the source data mapping of the source data extraction, the code development, forward engineering using the ODI connector for the forward automation."
"It is a central place for everybody to start any ETL data pipeline builds. This tool is being heavily used, plus it's heavily integrated with all the ETL data pipeline design and build processes. Nobody can bypass these processes and do something without going through this tool."
"There's also a 90-day policy where if a user is not using the warehouse, it will automatically delete that username."
"I also appreciate the reporting feature, which allows for the extraction of various reports based on specific needs. These reports can be used for audit purposes, such as tracking changes in file locations or deletions."
"Technical support from Varonis is rated as nine out of ten."
"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."
"The analytics would have to be our most valuable feature."
"The telemetry to capture everything and the reports are very easy to configure without having a developer degree."
"Varonis offers robust data access governance, allowing us to understand which sensitive data exists and who has access to it."
"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."
 

Cons

"If we are talking about the business side of the product, maybe the Data Literacy could be made a bit simpler. You have to put your hands on it, so there is room for improvement."
"The fact that I sometimes have to go in and out of different applications, even though it's all part of the whole erwin suite, perhaps means it could be architected a little bit better. I think they do have some ideas for improvements there."
"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."
"There is room for improvement with the data cataloging capability. Right now, there is a list of a lot of sources that they can catalog, or they can create metadata upon, but if they can add more then that would be a good plus for this tool."
"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."
"There was a huge learning curve, and I'd been in software development for most of my career. The application itself, and how it runs menus and screens when you can modify and code, is complex. I have found that kind of cumbersome."
"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."
"The technical support could be improved."
"I'd like to see automatic updates for this solution. Currently, it's a manual process to update all the keywords"
"The solution's areas of improvement are the interface and the dependency on on-premises deployment for some components."
"The product is very complicated."
"There is one thing that if I add something manually, I get so many alerts. That's the biggest bad thing."
"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."
"Varonis requires more access permissions for its core functions compared to competitors, which can be a concern for companies about data safety."
"I would like it to have cloud integration."
"For unstructured data monitoring, it's one of the top ones, if not the top one, due to its usability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost is around $7,000 for user. This is an estimation."
"The price is reasonable, and a subscription is required."
"The price is too high."
"The solution is aggressively priced."
"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 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."
"There is an additional fee for the server maintenance."
"erwin was at a good price. The federal government wouldn't buy something if the pricing wasn't good."
"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."
"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."
"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."
"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
9%
Non Profit
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about erwin Data Intelligence by Quest?
The data mapping manager is the most valuable feature.
What needs improvement with erwin Data Intelligence by Quest?
The data quality assessment requires third-party components and a separate license. I would like to have better integration around the data quality. I would appreciate the inclusion of a non-struct...
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 activities. We can see who accesses data and when files are created and understand w...
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 for improvement. Varonis requires more access permissions for its core function...
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 organization to protect it. We are looking for a solution that can scan our repositor...
 

Also Known As

erwin DG, erwin Data Governance
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Oracle, Infosys, GSK, Toyota Motor Sales, HSBC
Nottingham Building Society
Find out what your peers are saying about Varonis Platform vs. erwin Data Intelligence by Quest and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
856,856 professionals have used our research since 2012.