Global Data Excellence DEMS vs SAS Data Management vs erwin Data Intelligence comparison

Quest Software and Global Data Excellence are both solutions in the Data Governance category. Quest Software is ranked #28, while Global Data Excellence is ranked #48. Quest Software holds a 1.8% mindshare in DG, compared to Global Data Excellence’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Quest Software users are willing to recommend the solution.

erwin Data Intelligence

Read 18 erwin Data Intelligence reviews

2,992 Views
2,992 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Global Data Excellence DEMS

Read 2 Global Data Excellence DEMS reviews

139 Views
139 Comparison Views

0% willing to recommend

SAS Data Management

Read 17 SAS Data Management reviews

1,651 Views
413 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

erwin Data Intelligence

Global Data Excellence DEMS

SAS Data Management

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between erwin Data Intelligence, Global Data Excellence DEMS, and SAS Data Management based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Informatica, Collibra and others in Data Governance.

To learn more, read our detailed Data Governance Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Data Governance

September 2025

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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 SAS Data Management is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Governance Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
SAS Data Management	1.0%
erwin Data Intelligence	1.8%
Global Data Excellence DEMS	0.2%
Other	97.0%

Data Governance

Featured Reviews

Roy Pollack

Advisor Application Architect at CPS Energy

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.

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Alejandro Subia

General Manager at Datia

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.

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Vivek Trivedi

Head finance transformation at Ahli United Bank Ksc

Has robust data governance capabilities and efficient financial alerting features

The platform's robust data governance capabilities ensure strong compliance with regulatory standards. Our dedicated data governance team is responsible for setting policies and monitoring data access and usage. Additionally, we have a Data Protection Officer (DPO) and an independent InfoSec team that work together to enforce these policies. This multi-layered approach ensures that data governance is effectively managed and compliant with all necessary regulations. It is integrated with SQL and Power BI servers for executive management dashboard reporting. This integration supports comprehensive data analysis and reporting needs, which was a key factor in our decision. The value of using vCenter lies in its comprehensive data infrastructure management. It significantly enhances our reporting, day-to-day decision-making, and analytics capabilities. Integrating SaaS with vCenter adds value by streamlining key functions and improving overall organizational efficiency. The solution can be considered expensive, particularly due to infrastructure, maintenance, and ownership costs. The long-term savings and efficiencies gained from using vCenter can justify the investment for large organizations. However, the high costs might not be justifiable for smaller organizations with less data and fewer resources. Conducting a thorough cost-benefit analysis based on the organization's specific needs and scale is recommended. I rate it an eight.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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 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."

More erwin Data Intelligence pros

"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."

"I find the solution to be very stable."

"The technical support is excellent."

"Its robustness is valuable. It is a full-fledged suite. We have a data warehouse model, and there are also a lot of data quality management tools. The repository and all other tools are there. So, it is a full package in terms of reporting tools."

"The product offers very good flexibility."

"The platform's robust data governance capabilities ensure strong compliance with regulatory standards."

"In terms of which features I have found most valuable, I would say the importing and exporting features. Additionally, the data sorting, categorizing and summarizing features, especially how it can summarize based on categories. These are the key features."

"The solution is very stable. We haven't faced any issues with glitches or bugs. We haven't had any crashes."

"The tool is reliable, quick, and powerful."

More SAS Data Management pros

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."

"The metadata ingestion is very nice because of the ability to automate it. It would be nice to be able to do this ingestion, or set it up, from one place, instead of having to set it up separately for every data asset that is ingested."

"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."

"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."

"Another area where it can improve is by having BB-Graph-type databases where relationship discovery and relationship identification are much easier."

"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."

"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."

"The technical support could be improved."

More erwin Data Intelligence cons

"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."

"There is significant room for improvement, especially with regard to using a hybrid approach that involves both CAS and persistent storage."

"The solution could use better documentation."

"The pricing of the solution needs to be improved. They need to work to make it more affordable."

"I would like the tool to include the ability to automate the modifications of the integrations."

"One problem is accessing the data using a solution other than SAS. The SAS data, which we create in the SAS, cannot be accessed by other tools. We can't open those data in other applications. So we need to have that application in place."

"We find we often have to go back and re-train users when there are changes made to the solution because the changes are not intuitive."

"Very little needs to improve but perhaps a nicer graphic interface and remaining competetive in the growing field of data analytics."

"The solution is quite expensive and hard to install/configure."

More SAS Data Management cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."

"The price is reasonable, and a subscription is required."

"The licensing cost is around $7,000 for user. This is an estimation."

"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 too high."

"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."

More erwin Data Intelligence pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The licensing model for vCenter is a perpetual license with yearly payments."

"The solution is expensive."

"The tool is a bit expensive."

"While it is even free for personal use on the cloud, it can be expensive for desktop installations and enterprise use."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

26%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Non Profit

No data available

Financial Services Firm

29%

Government

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	1
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	14

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAS Data Management?

From my experience, SAS Data Management is an expensive tool.

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What needs improvement with SAS Data Management?

There is significant room for improvement, especially with regard to using a hybrid approach that involves both CAS a...

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What is your primary use case for SAS Data Management?

Some clients and I are using SAS Data Management for data cleansing, data warehousing, and IoT-related activities suc...

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Comparisons

Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs erwin Data Intelligence

Compared 32% of the time

Collibra Governance vs erwin Data Intelligence

Compared 26% of the time

Alation Data Catalog vs erwin Data Intelligence

Compared 12% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs erwin Data Intelligence

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager vs erwin Data Intelligence

Compared 9% of the time

More erwin Data Intelligence Competitors

No data available

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs SAS Data Management

Compared 22% of the time

Collibra Governance vs SAS Data Management

Compared 14% of the time

Protegrity’s Data Protection Platform vs SAS Data Management

Compared 13% of the time

Palantir Foundry vs SAS Data Management

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs SAS Data Management

Compared 9% of the time

More SAS Data Management Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Intelligence

September 2025

Download erwin Data Intelligence product report

Buyer's Guide

Data Governance

September 2025

Download Global Data Excellence DEMS product report

Buyer's Guide

SAS Data Management

September 2025

Download SAS Data Management product report

Also Known As

erwin DG, erwin Data Governance

No data available

SAS Data Management Platform, Data Management Platform, DataFlux

Overview

Erwin Data Intelligence drives automation, supports data catalog and literacy, and offers Smart Data Connectors for efficient metadata handling. Its customization flexibility and integration facilitate enhanced data governance, visualization, analysis, and compliance.

Erwin Data Intelligence offers automation scripts that accelerate development, integrated data cataloging, data profiling, and lineage analysis to streamline information management. Users appreciate its capability in metadata harvesting, code engineering, and infrastructure integration. The tool provides flexibility to enhance governance and data visualization. While it performs well, users have noted challenges with API robustness and interface complexity, and there are opportunities to improve workflow integration, AI features, and large dataset handling. Companies rely on it for metadata management, automation of metadata mappings, and data governance to support compliance and literacy.

What are the main features of Erwin Data Intelligence?

Automation Scripts: Speeds up development processes through powerful scripts.
Data Catalog: Supports comprehensive data mapping and profiles for better analysis.
Smart Data Connectors: Efficiently handles code engineering and metadata harvesting.
Customization Flexibility: Adapts to existing infrastructure for seamless integration.
Comprehensive Visualization: Empowers data visualization and standardization processes.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Increased Development Speed: Automation scripts notably enhance development efficiency.
Improved Data Governance: Streamlines processes, supporting compliance and business definitions.
Effective Integration: Seamlessly fits with ETL tools and existing workflows.
Enhanced Data Literacy: Supports data literacy initiatives with robust cataloging features.
Comprehensive Impact Analysis: Facilitates thorough analysis for informed decision-making.

In industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail, organizations implement Erwin Data Intelligence for efficient metadata management and governance. It assists in automating lineage and mapping, supporting ETL procedures while enhancing compliance and data literacy efforts. Its flexibility and integration support create valuable data insights and governance improvements.

Quest Software

The Data Excellence Management System© (DEMS) is a complete integrated cloud-based system (internal or external) that enables organizations to accelerate the maximization of the business value of organization’ strategies and transactions while minimizing operational costs. It provides a factual value-driven collaboration that engages end-users from all levels in the ultimate value creation.

DEMS fits the maturity of your organization functions and resources. It establishes accountability and responsibility throughout the organizational structure and links the data assets to the value flows to predicatively govern business strategies.

Global Data Excellence

Every decision, every business move, every successful customer interaction - they all come down to high-quality, well-integrated data. If you don't have it, you don't win. SAS Data Management is an industry-leading solution built on a data quality platform that helps you improve, integrate and govern your data.

SAS

Sample Customers

Oracle, Infosys, GSK, Toyota Motor Sales, HSBC

Givaudan, Firmenich, Bacardi, Manitowoc, Romande Energie, Noveli, BNP Paribas, Michelin, IUCN

Data Management, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Absa, Aegon, Allianz Global Corporate & SpecialtyAusgrid, Bank of Queensland, Bell, BMC Software, Canada Post, Ceska pojistovna, Chantecler, Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, Credit Guarantee Corporation, Cr_dito y Cauci‹n, Delaware State Police, Deutsche Lufthansa, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, DSM, Enerjisa, ERGO Insurance Group, Florida Department of Corrections, Generali Hellas, Gitanjali Group, Gloucestershire Constabulary, GS Home Shopping, HealthPartners, IAG New Zealand, iJET, Invacare, Livzon Pharmaceutical Group, Los Angeles County, Miami Herald Media Company, Netherlands Enterprise Agency, New Zealand Ministry of Health, Nippon Paper, North Carolina Office of Information Technology Services, Orlando Magic, OTP Group, PITT OHIO, Plano Independent School District, RWE Poland, Spanish Air Force, Stockholm County Council, Telus, The Travel Corporation, Transitions Optical, Triad Analytic Solutions, UNIQA, US Census Bureau, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, West Midlands Police, XS Inc., Zenith Insurance

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Informatica, Collibra and others in Data Governance. Updated: September 2025.

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