Alation offers enterprise data intelligence solutions, including data search & discovery, data governance, data stewardship, analytics, and digital transformation. Alation operates in thethe data catalog market. With its Behavioral Analysis Engine, inbuilt collaboration capabilities, and open interfaces, Alation combines machine learning with human insight with the goal of tackle the most demanding challenges in data and metadata management.
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SAP Information Steward
Score 9.0 out of 10
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Monitor, analyze, and improve data integrity
with SAP Information Steward software.
Combine data profiling and metadata management tools for continuous
insight into the quality of enterprise information to optimize processes, and
enhance operational, analytical, and data governance initiatives.
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Pricing
Alation Data Catalog
SAP Information Steward
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Alation
SAP Information Steward
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
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SAP Information Steward is sold by CPU core volume to provide the processing power required to meet enterprise data integration and quality needs.
Alation is pretty easy to implement. We were able to do it ourselves with Alation's help, no 3rd party needed. We are currently migrating to Snowflake, and it has been helpful with prioritizing what gets migrated. It's great for searching for tables and views. I even use it when I'm trying to find fields in a large table. If I'm not sure if the field is called first_name, firstname, or fname, I can use Alation's table page, filter for fields with "name", and easily find it.
In data conversion scenarios, the tool can be used for data profiling, data quality and data verification jobs. However, implementation depends on what implementation strategy or approach the company is adopting. In real-time scenarios, the tool can be used for generating data profiling and data quality reports as well. Business rules for data quality checks can be built into the tool and can be assigned to end or business users.
Ability to link objects using the @ symbol. It allows us to easily provide a way to get more information or context. So if the business concept is part of a hierarchy, we can link to the other terms in that hierarchy.
The customization is really helpful. Most object types have robust customization options. Others are less so, but it is improving. We've created multiple custom fields to support our data governance framework.
The search feature with filtering is helpful in narrowing down what you're looking for.
The lineage UI is not ready for primetime. I would not recommend this feature for my users at this time because it's too complex to understand and is visually difficult to track down specific paths.
The underlying infrastructure of the on-premise version of the software is fragile and unnecessarily complicated, using too many modules and technologies.
The license model of the on-premise version contains too many add-ons. I would like to pay one price and get all of the features.
Mostly because the search feature is case sensitive. This causes issues when users are searching for an industry standard acronym. These acronyms exist as attributes in thousands of places across our data ecosystem. Alation allows stewards to endorse attributes so that these endorsed items rise to the top of search results. The problem is no one types acronyms in caps in a search field. Alation returns results matching the case (lower-case) and in several instances the endorsed attributes don't even appear on the first page of results
From the RightStart Program to the Customer Success team to technical support, Alation has it all covered. They respond quickly and expertly to answer my questions and fix my problems.
I believe many features from SAP Information Steward are available in other SAP products as well hence it is more confusing for business or customers to do the right selection. Moreover SAP strategy is not very clear for this particular product hence often we are confused while exploring more related scenarios
Alation might not have the same level of technical capabilities and features as these others (though it's very close) but what Alation offers is a neat and easy to learn UI. The new UI is even better, bringing more content onto the same space like Informatica while maintaining the friendly interface of the old UI
In the case of this organization, Information Steward was part of a suite from SAP together with Data Services and SAP Master Data Governance. In terms of the overall package it was worth it for the company. Informatica cost was higher and the overall benefit from SAP package was the key decision point.
We've had limited but very positive impact for 3 data subject matter experts. In the past they were fielding very similar questions from users stumbling on their data. Now, rather than responding to each email or chat message, they not only direct users to the catalog but they also reach out to me to do a walk-through of Alation's other features.
Another positive impact is having the data dictionary live in one location. This has been tremendous in making the dictionaries accessible and consistent.
