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Alation Data Catalog vs Microsoft Purview Data Governance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Alation Data Catalog
Ranking in Data Governance
4th
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Metadata Management (2nd)
Microsoft Purview Data Gove...
Ranking in Data Governance
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 8.0%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Governance is 27.9%, down from 28.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance
 

Featured Reviews

Brahma Lam - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 7, 2023
Has metadata cataloging features but needs changes in domain model
The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature.  The tool's domain model needs to be changed.  Alation Data Catalog is stable.  The solution is scalable.  Alation Data Catalog's deployment is easy. I rate it a nine out of ten. Deployment takes only two to three hours to complete.…
Peter West - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 22, 2023
Data labeling gives visibility into where your confidential and critical data are
There are negatives to the compliance aspect of Purview in that you get a lot of false positives with some of the native scanning and rules in the platform. A lot of them need tweaking to get a more realistic handle on what data there is. Also, I wouldn't say that the remediation of policy violations is particularly great. It has improved, but it's not very easy to dig into things if there is a policy violation. A lot of them are false-positives. It has helped reduce the time to action on insider threats, but there are quite a lot of false positives there as well. Overall, it's a work in progress for Microsoft. I would also like to see pre-built reporting. The dashboard isn't really that intuitive. It would be good to have more intuitive dashboards that you can drill down into or even customizable dashboards.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The platform's most valuable features are workflow automation, automated business metadata tagging, technical metadata tagging, and data integration with data quality tools or platforms."
"Given the relatively low level of maturity, Alation's most relevant feature at the moment is a user interface that's easy to navigate, which helps us find and understand the data. So while Alation has a lot more functionality, our pain point right now is being able to easily find, understand, and trust the information to use it."
"We can customize templates based on our use cases."
"The most valuable features of Alation Data Catalog are the simplicity in onboarding data sources, the security in securing the data sources, and the way the various users of Alation Data Catalog communicate with each other through a messenger."
"The solution is used to query MySQL clients and store data and documentation."
"The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature."
"Alation Data Catalog provides a nice interface for connecting to the database, querying the data, and working on it."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the ALLIE AI feature."
"Purview's greatest benefit for us is data discovery."
"Purview helps mitigate risk and allows us to govern the information being shared among apps and devices."
"The custom classifications are one of the most valuable features."
"The labeling is the most valuable feature for the companies I'm installing it for. Some of them have several thousand staff, and their concerns are around confidential or private data being shared. The labels and the policies involved with them give them that initial visibility."
"The audit log has been a lifesaver for a lot of reasons. Historically, when using SaaS products, there were always questions about how the audit was going and whether we were sufficient out of the box. Purview has many capabilities available through centralized reporting that provide a view of a specific segment."
"One of the best features is the classification rules, especially the scan rule sets. They are really useful, especially when we need to understand the current data the company has to ensure that all the problematic data can be put under someone's responsibility."
"The documentation is very exhaustive. Anyone can go ahead and try different use cases."
"Data authentication enables us to classify documents based on whether they should be restricted for internal consumption or permitted for external sharing."
 

Cons

"The product's data governance features need improvement."
"Alation Data Catalog needs to develop a lot in terms of data governance and would be improved with a built-in interactive data quality solution."
"Alation Data Catalog does not provide end-to-end data lineage."
"Data observability within Alation would be incredibly helpful for addressing these challenges"
"Alation Data Catalog doesn't support end-to-end lineage. By that, I mean the ability to trace the movement of data from when it first comes into our organization to where it's consumed."
"It would be good if the tool could show the output from the records while querying."
"I know that this has been on their roadmap and they're working on it, but as a whole, there's an untapped reservoir of capabilities within their article features that could be used and built upon."
"The tool's domain model needs to be changed."
"The API needs some improvement when connecting to non-Microsoft API sources. This is a limiting factor."
"There are some limitations with regard to the lineage of data from different parts of the system."
"The overall cost of deploying this solution could be better. It seems that middle and small-sized organizations are not completely happy with deploying this solution in terms of the cost. It would be good if they concentrate on the cost part."
"I have some concerns about the separation of roles in Purview from the Microsoft tenant, as well as how they interact with the security portal and endpoint manager."
"It could reduce pricing to encourage usage."
"Setting up Purview in a production tenant proved challenging due to a lack of clear documentation on permission requirements."
"The product needs improvement to edit the number of assets. It needs to be more inuitive as well."
"The current event-based retention management is very poor."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is a little expensive."
"A three-year agreement is better than a one-year rolling 12-month agreement from a price point of view. I'd recommend looking at a three-year deal because you can't stand up a catalog and produce value in 12 months."
"The platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market."
"I don't have all the details on the pricing side, but the solution was more expensive than originally expected."
"The pricing is reasonable because it's part of the 365 E3 or E5 license you buy."
"We pay $15,000 per end user for the E5 license."
"Currently, the licensing differs for the governance side compared to the risk and compliance side."
"The categorization within the licensing could be improved. There are a lot of solutions within Microsoft Purview. If the licensing could be a bit clearer and the solutions could be better categorized according to function and across multiple environments, that would be excellent. The licensing is very confusing."
"The solution is extremely affordable for the K-12 space."
"Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention is not cheap."
"Microsoft Purview is priced in the middle. It isn't the cheapest, but it isn't the most expensive. It's affordable compared to other public cloud services."
"I consider it cost-efficient because of the metrics it provides."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alation Data Catalog?
The platform's most valuable features are workflow automation, automated business metadata tagging, technical metadata tagging, and data integration with data quality tools or platforms.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alation Data Catalog?
I don't have all the details on the pricing side, but the solution was more expensive than originally expected. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solut...
What needs improvement with Alation Data Catalog?
When issues arise, two key concerns arise. First, how can we perform root cause analysis faster? Second, how can we optimize resource allocation, considering the associated costs? Every customer is...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Purview?
It is designed to seamlessly connect to various data sources, which is particularly beneficial for our customers who primarily use Microsoft technologies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Purview?
It is cheap or free since we have an EFI license. It is free for the EFI user.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Purview?
There is definitely room for improvement as this product is quite new. In terms of the competence of the tools with the Microsoft ecosystem, the product can do better.
 

Also Known As

Alation
Microsoft Purview, MS Azure Purview
 

Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Alation Data Catalog vs. Microsoft Purview Data Governance and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.