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Global Data Excellence DEMS vs erwin Data Intelligence comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 19, 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
Ranking in Data Governance
28th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
AI Governance (17th)
Global Data Excellence DEMS
Ranking in Data Governance
49th
Average Rating
0.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
erwin Data Intelligence1.8%
Global Data Excellence DEMS0.2%
Other98.0%
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Being able to capture different business metrics and organize them in different catalogs is most valuable. We can organize these metrics into sales-related metrics, customer-related metrics, supply chain-related metrics, etc."
"Data Intelligence creates a single source of truth for all of our metadata. This solution is better for data warehousing, but the metadata features speed up our development work. It's easy to create and manage mappings because we can export them to Informatica and pick up the work where we left off."
"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 possibility to write automation scripts is the biggest benefit for us. We have several products with metadata and metadata mapping capabilities. The big difference when we were choosing this product was the ability to run automation scripts against metadata and metadata mappings. Right now, we have a very high level of automation based on these automation scripts, so it's really the core feature for us."
"Data Intelligence allows us to automate multiple tasks we had previously done manually, such as restructuring the metadata for our purposes, setting up ETL flows, and defining the data tables we create. It also enables us to standardize our approach and our technical processes."
"We always know where our data is, and anybody can look that up, whether they're a business person who doesn't know anything about Informatica, or a developer who knows everything about creating data movement jobs in Informatica, but who does not understand the business terminology or the data that is being used in the tool."
"Overall, DI's data cataloging, data literacy, and automation have helped our decision-makers because when a source wants to change something, we immediately know what the impact is going to be downstream."
"The data mapping manager is the most valuable feature."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the semantic linguistic artificial intelligence that allows the user to have contact with the system in their natural language."
 

Cons

"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."
"It's a little bit clunky. I think a lot of these features were bolted on, and they don't necessarily transition smoothly in the interface. I would like to see a little more cohesion."
"Really huge datasets, where the logical names or the lexicons weren't groomed or maintained well, were the only area where it really had room for improvement. A huge data set would cause erwin to crash. If there were half a million or 1 million tables, erwin would hang."
"The data quality assessment requires third-party components and a separate license."
"There are a lot of little things like moving between read screens and edit screens. Those little human interface type of programming pieces will need to mature a bit to make it easier to get to where you want to go to put the stuff in."
"Another area where it can improve is by having BB-Graph-type databases where relationship discovery and relationship identification are much easier."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"erwin's pricing was cheaper than its competitors."
"There is an additional fee for the server maintenance."
"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."
"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 solution is aggressively priced."
"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."
"The whole suite, not just the DI but the modeling software, the harvester, Mapping Manager — everything we have — is about $100,000 a year for our renewals. That works out to each module being something like $8,000 to $10,000."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
7%
Insurance Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

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

Also Known As

erwin DG, erwin Data Governance
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Oracle, Infosys, GSK, Toyota Motor Sales, HSBC
Givaudan, Firmenich, Bacardi, Manitowoc, Romande Energie, Noveli, BNP Paribas, Michelin, IUCN 
Find out what your peers are saying about Global Data Excellence DEMS vs. erwin Data Intelligence and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.