Alation

Score7.1 out of 10

44 Reviews and Ratings

What is Alation?

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.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Alation Intelligent Search, which helps to democratize access to enterprise data and foster a robust data culture.

a display of end-to-end lineage to understand data flows, relationships, health, and impact analysis.

where users can access the privacy policies. This helps everyone in an organization to make data-driven decisions while also ensuring compliance and security.

1 / 3

Verified User

Professional in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Alation is used in our organization as a way to enable users to find trusted data. Like any other organization, many data objects can have similar names so a data catalog is needed to make metadata easy to curate and simple to find and understand. The scope of our use case is any consumable data...raw form direct from data sources, prepared reports and dashboards.

Pros

Bulk curation- Alation makes it easy for a data steward to quickly upload a data dictionary. It's also super simple to find dozens of data objects which the steward wants to associate themselves to.
Implementation- Like any other solution, an investment of time is required to configure the product and your environment. What Alation Data Catalog does well is allowing different admin roles to easily configure the catalog and even customize fields needed by our consumers. Getting to value is super fast with Alation.

Cons

Lineage- only table level lineage is included as standard. To view column level lineage, you have to pay extra to unlock. I felt this could have been communicated better earlier in the process.
Conversations- this is one of the best selling points of the tool but what is lacking is a quick and easy way for an admin to monitor conversations. Sure you can run custom queries to see which questions haven't been addressed but I feel this should be part of the built-in reporting.

Return on Investment

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.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Collibra Data Intelligence Cloud and Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog

Other Software Used

Microsoft Teams, Atlassian Confluence, monday.com

Miriam Barberena View profile

Data Governance Analyst in Information Technology at NI (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Alation for visibility into the tables, views, and dashboards across our data platforms, adding metadata to help users find the best data for their needs. We also use the Business Glossary capability to provide a centralized, searchable place that promotes a common business language. It includes definitions, business rules, some concept diagrams, and links to additional context. And we use articles to provide additional context, best practices, and links to training.

Pros

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.

Cons

Term tables are not yet in the Alation Analytics area. This makes it difficult to manage the creation of terms in the various business glossaries.
We've had some issues with the connectors, but Alation has been helpful in trying to get them to work.
The BI area is not as robust as the rdbms area. Tableau dashboards are listed as folders which can be confusing for users.

Most Important Features

Search
Automated synching with data sources
Customization
Bulk updating

Return on Investment

Provides a place where people can go to find things
When we first implemented, someone was concerned that people would now see what a mess our data environment was. I consider that a feature. We can't clean up if we can't see what we have.

Alternatives Considered

Collibra Data Intelligence Cloud, data.world and Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog

Allen Goldschmidt View profile

Director of Data Management in Engineering at Fiserv (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our leadership once said "Uncataloged data is useless to us." We use Alation to catalog our data, track lineage, and explain our business.

Pros

Entering and editing content. The UI is easy to use and understand.
Browsing and searching for content is intuitive and detailed.
Adding data sources is easy to do through the UI without having to fiddle with configuration files.

Cons

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.

Most Important Features

Data documentation and editing of content
Finding data documentation via searching and browsing
Accessing Alation's content via API

Return on Investment

Alation has allowed us to quickly document our data with minimal training of existing subject matter experts
We've been able to use Alation's APIs to access our data documentation without having to build a custom data dictionary

Alternatives Considered

Ataccama ONE

Other Software Used

StreamSets DataOps Platform, Snowflake, H2O

Alan Sheppard

National Data Governance and Compliance Manager in Information Technology at Hato Hone St John (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We're at the tail end of our right-start implementation. The objective is creating a single source of information for consumers of data as well as discovery and consolidation of assets that live in silos within the organisation. Our practice is at an early stage so will be related to a data maturity / governance programme that is about to start.

Pros

Right Start
University and supportive training materials
Intuitive interface

Cons

Support for Microsoft legacy products such as SSIS would be great
Physical presence in New Zealand would be great, virtual contact is okay but may add time to task completion / consolidation of learning
Simple statements on systems / environments / protocols supported by connectors would be great up-front to inform decision making.

Most Important Features

Support for collaborative working
Discovery and monitoring of data and lineage
Management of sensitive data elements and data access

Return on Investment

We are still completing rightstart, too early to report.

Alternatives Considered

Talend Data Fabric, Microsoft Purview eDiscovery and Informatica Axon Data Governance

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365 Business Premium

Nicole Guaetta-Hoffmann, CDMP View profile

Data Architect in Information Technology at Veterans United Home Loans (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Documentation is often sparse for data in any organization. We use Alation as a central repository for metadata curation and documentation, and also as a central communication hub for our data.