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SAS Viya 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

erwin Data Intelligence
Ranking in Data Governance
18th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
AI Governance (3rd)
SAS Viya Platform
Ranking in Data Governance
30th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (46th), Data Quality (21st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of erwin Data Intelligence is 2.0%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Viya Platform is 0.4%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
erwin Data Intelligence2.0%
SAS Viya Platform0.4%
Other97.6%
Data Governance
 

Featured Reviews

Jog Raj - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Automated lineage and business glossaries have improved data understanding and collaboration
I am open to answering a few questions about erwin Data Intelligence and sharing my opinion about the product. Regarding the analytic part of the product, I find it very interesting that erwin Data Intelligence has its own inbuilt reporting toolset, with a new version coming out in January that will be AI-powered. This means you will be able to write analytical reports and questions based on the metadata and data lineage, making it more powerful than the current version, as AI will assist in creating those reports and performing analysis on the metadata. I find that the time taken to realize value from erwin Data Intelligence can be quite long. Creating a data catalog and developing data lineage takes significant time, and I expect that AI will help accelerate the process of creating data products by streamlining the steps involved. I can recommend erwin Data Intelligence to other users. I would rate this review as an eight out of ten overall.
KK
Assistant Manager Data Analytics (WFM) at Johari Digital Healthcare Limited
Modern analytics has transformed large data into faster insights and streamlined reporting
There are some areas of improvement I would mention regarding SAS Viya Platform. New users may find it complex initially, as its learning curve can be steep. Understanding CAS and different components is very challenging for a new user. The cost is also quite high; SAS Viya Platform via SaaS can be expensive compared to some open-source or other cloud alternatives. There are also some limitations in Visual Analytics. While it is easy to use, it could be more flexible compared to Power BI or Tableau. These are the main improvement areas where SAS Viya Platform should focus. I would add some additional pointers about needed improvements in SAS Viya Platform. Regarding customer support, it is good, but the response time for complex issues can sometimes be slower than expected. The documentation and learning resources are not very beginner-friendly, making it challenging for beginners to navigate. Regarding integration, it could be smoother with Databricks, Snowflake, and Power BI, but it is more complex than it should be. Since updates are automatic, users are sometimes not fully aware of changes or new features that are being updated, as compared to Power BI, which publishes updates on its website. SAS Viya Platform should work on these aspects.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The data mapping manager is the most valuable feature."
"The client is thrilled with higher quality, lower-cost products, and the services."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"This type of solution was key to moving our entire company in the right direction by getting everyone to think about data governance."
"Since starting to work with SAS Viya Platform, the positive impact we have seen includes improvements in distributing data sets for better analytics and machine learning."
"Using SAS Viya Platform, I saw approximately a thirty to forty percent reduction in data processing time due to CAS in-memory computing, and I also reduced manual reporting efforts by approximately forty to fifty percent through automation and self-service dashboards, which definitely saved resources for my organization."
"SAS Viya Platform has positively impacted my organization by saving time compared to when we were using SAS 9.4, as we can now work on two to three projects simultaneously within one hour, which is a significant improvement."
"SAS Viya Platform is a very advanced platform at the current time, and I recommend using SAS Viya Platform for all data visualization, data analysis, and statistical analysis."
"SAS Viya Platform is a great tool for our data analytics purpose, particularly how data profiling stands out compared to other tools impressed me."
"In my experience, the best feature of SAS Viya Platform is that it is very quick in doing the analysis, does the job very quickly and very well without any issues, and I was able to do multiple analyses at the same time."
"Using SAS Viya Platform allows my organization to conduct advanced statistical tests, present data in better ways with efficient and good graphical representation, and this helps my company grow more."
"Eliminating the need for separate visualization tools has greatly affected my team's workflow because it is just one integrated tool, one integrated platform."
 

Cons

"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."
"Improvement is required for the AIMatch feature, which is supposed to help automatically discover relationships in data."
"The SDK behind this entire product needs improvement. The company really should focus more on this because we were finding some inconsistencies on the LDK level. Everything worked fine from the UI perspective, but when we started doing some deep automation scripts going through multiple API calls inside the tool, then only some pieces of it work or it would not return the exact data it was supposed to do."
"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."
"One big improvement we would like to see would be the workflow integration of codeset mapping with the erwin source to target mapping. That's a bit clunky for us."
"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."
"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."
"There may be some opportunities for improvement in terms of the user interface to make it a little bit more intuitive."
"On the SAS compute server, the platform sometimes gets stuck or lags, which could be improved in SAS Viya Platform."
"The cost is also quite high; SAS Viya Platform via SaaS can be expensive compared to some open-source or other cloud alternatives."
"I sometimes experienced downtime with SAS Viya Platform, but the SAS support team helped."
"I would advise others looking into using SAS Viya Platform to go ahead if their budget allows."
"I rate it a nine because for a fresher, the platform might not be entirely intuitive."
"I have one complaint about SAS Viya Platform: it offers so many options in each application that someone new who is not familiar with SAS functionality might have trouble, as the learning curve can be very hard for a new learner."
"I think SAS Viya Platform could be improved as it is a little bit limited; for instance, you have to purchase specific features such as charts and quality control, so it is not a full analytics product."
"SAS Viya Platform has a bit of a learning curve. It was not easy to start with."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"erwin's pricing was cheaper than its competitors."
"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."
"erwin was at a good price. The federal government wouldn't buy something if the pricing wasn't good."
"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."
"The licensing cost is around $7,000 for user. This is an estimation."
"erwin is cheaper than other solutions and this should appeal to other buyers. It has a good price tag."
"The price is too high."
"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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
6%
Construction Company
31%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with erwin Data Intelligence by Quest?
In my opinion, the analytics part of erwin Data Intelligence is not satisfactory. The name 'Intelligence' is not related specifically to analytics; it is focused on data governance with no advanced...
What is your primary use case for erwin Data Intelligence by Quest?
My main use case for erwin Data Intelligence is applying it and the DQ Labs in a financial institution.
What advice do you have for others considering erwin Data Intelligence by Quest?
The integration of business glossaries has significantly helped improve collaboration in our organization. We define the business glossaries first during meetings with the business, and then we bul...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAS Viya Platform?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for SAS Viya Platform was smooth. I did not have any hiccups, and I do not have a say on the pricing.
What needs improvement with SAS Viya Platform?
There are some areas of improvement I would mention regarding SAS Viya Platform. New users may find it complex initially, as its learning curve can be steep. Understanding CAS and different compone...
What is your primary use case for SAS Viya Platform?
My main use cases are data analytics, reporting, and data transformation. It helps in handling large data sets efficiently using CAS, which is an in-memory processing engine. My primary use case is...
 

Also Known As

erwin DG, erwin Data Governance
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Oracle, Infosys, GSK, Toyota Motor Sales, HSBC
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about SAS Viya Platform vs. erwin Data Intelligence and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.