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Alation Reviews & Product Details

Alation Overview

What is Alation?

Alation is the data intelligence company. Nearly 600 global enterprises — including 40% of the Fortune 100 — rely on Alation to realize value from their data and AI initiatives. Customers such as Cisco, DocuSign, Nasdaq, Pfizer, and Samsung trust Alation’s platform for self-service analytics, cloud transformation, data governance, and AI-ready data, fostering data-driven innovation at scale.

Alation Details
Product Website
Languages Supported
English
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Product Description

Alation is a data catalog designed to empower analysts to search, query & collaborate on data to gain faster, more accurate insights.

How do you position yourself against your competitors?

Alation, the data intelligence platform, is building a data-fluent world by changing the way people find, understand, trust, use, and reuse data. Alation indexes data assets from across repositories, including databases, file systems, and data visualization tools. Whether in the cloud or on-premises, Alation gives enterprises a single source of reference to search, compose, curate, and collaborate on data.


Seller Details
Seller
Alation
Company Website
Year Founded
2012
HQ Location
Redwood City, CA
Twitter
@Alation
3,609 Twitter followers
LinkedIn® Page
www.linkedin.com
668 employees on LinkedIn®
Description

Alation is a leading data intelligence company that specializes in providing a data catalog solution. Their platform helps organizations discover, understand, and govern their data, enabling users to make informed decisions and drive insights. Alation's innovative tools incorporate machine learning and collaboration features, making it easier for teams to share knowledge and maintain data quality. With a focus on empowering data-driven cultures, Alation serves a diverse range of industries, helping businesses maximize the value of their data assets. For more information, visit their website at https://alation.com.


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Recent Alation Reviews

Verified User
A
Verified UserEnterprise (> 1000 emp.)
5.0 out of 5
"Loving Alation"
I appreciate Alation's user-friendly interface, which simplifies the process of finding and accessing data. Its intuitive design enhances productiv...
ZM
Zach M.Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
4.5 out of 5
"Alation is Best in Class"
Alation is extremely flexible and able to fit small to large organizations. They tread the perfect line between analytics and governance. Their vis...
Verified User
A
Verified UserEnterprise (> 1000 emp.)
5.0 out of 5
"Amazing experience"
Governance across the company is critical and we're slowly getting there. It's simple as a google search.
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Alation Media

Alation Demo - Search
Search: Quickly find data with natural language or advanced search capabilities like tags, asset types, and more
Alation Demo - Compose
Compose guides SQL writers to the right data and away from the wrong data. Queries are color-coded in real time with data quality insights and recommended tables and columns based on popularity. Improve trustworthiness of query results and ensure compliant data use.
Alation Demo - Collaborate
Communicate seamlessly with others and assign tasks right in the workflow
Alation Demo - Trust your data
View lineage, tags, quality, trust flags, endorsements, and comments from other users. Now you know how reliable each asset is at a glance.
Alation Demo - Active AI governance
ALLIE AI builds upon Alation’s machine learning (ML) core to enable organizations to save time and scale data initiatives more efficiently, democratize trusted data, and advance new AI initiatives.
Alation Demo - Measure success
Measuring the impact of your governance efforts against goals is crucial. The governance dashboard provides leaders visibility into curation progress metrics to monitor if goals are being met.

Official Downloads

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65 Alation Reviews

4.4 out of 5
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65 Alation Reviews
4.4 out of 5
65 Alation Reviews
4.4 out of 5

Alation Pros and Cons

How are these determined?Information
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Pros
Cons

Overall Review Sentiment for AlationQuestion

Time to Implement
<1 day
>12 months
Return on Investment
<6 months
48+ months
Ease of Setup
0 (Difficult)
10 (Easy)
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G2 reviews are authentic and verified.
Verified User in Retail
AR
Enterprise(> 1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: G2 invite
(Original )Information
What do you like best about Alation?

I appreciate Alation's user-friendly interface, which simplifies the process of finding and accessing data. Its intuitive design enhances productivity and efficiency in navigating through various datasets and reports. Additionally, the platform's robust search capabilities empower users to quickly locate relevant information, supporting informed decision-making. The collaborative features within Alation foster effective communication and knowledge sharing among team members, contributing to a more collaborative and cohesive working environment, which we'd love to take advantage of soon. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Alation?

While Alation offers many valuable features, there are a few areas where improvements could be made. One aspect that I find challenging is the complexity of setting up and configuring certain functionalities, such as customizing data governance policies or integrating with external tools. Streamlining these processes and providing clearer guidance would enhance the user experience and reduce the learning curve for new users. Additionally, although the platform offers extensive documentation and support resources, navigating through them can sometimes be overwhelming, leading to difficulties in finding specific information or troubleshooting issues. Simplifying the documentation structure and improving search functionality would greatly benefit users in efficiently accessing the help they need. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Alation solving and how is that benefiting you?

Alation addresses several critical challenges in data management, ultimately benefiting our organization in various ways. One key problem it solves is the lack of centralized and accessible data documentation. By providing a unified platform for cataloging and organizing data assets, Alation ensures that stakeholders can easily discover and understand available data resources, fostering collaboration and informed decision-making across teams. Additionally, Alation helps to promote data governance and compliance by enabling the implementation of standardized policies and procedures for data usage, lineage tracking, and access control. This not only enhances data quality and security but also mitigates risks associated with regulatory non-compliance or data breaches. Alation's automated data profiling and analysis capabilities also streamline the process of data discovery and validation, saving time and effort for data professionals. Overall, Alation's comprehensive suite of features empowers our organization to effectively manage and leverage its data assets, driving efficiency, productivity, and data-driven insights. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

ZM
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: G2 invite on behalf of seller
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Alation?

Alation is extremely flexible and able to fit small to large organizations. They tread the perfect line between analytics and governance. Their vision perfectly aligns with our organization's data management vision of universally understood and trusted data available across the company. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Alation?

There is definitely some room for growth with lineage capabilities. Alation has been upfront with their plans to rapidly enhance lineage functionality. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Alation solving and how is that benefiting you?

We have plenty of data tribal knowledge in our organization. Alation is helping us document and set up processes that capture tribal knowledge and share it along with best practices to key individuals. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Divyaraj R.
DR
Associate Data Analyst
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Review source: G2 invite on behalf of seller
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Alation?

Alation strives for the best industrial business solultions and offers wide range of collections in their ecosystems be it across different categories like Finance, healthcare, etc., Alation delivers the best product which is ease of use and provide number of features across their deliverables. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Alation?

Alation has great examples of showcasing business usecases to the clients by addressing and fostering their problems that they want to leverage. Highly recommended platform and there's no dislike takeaway since they provide ease of integration and ease of implementation in their own catalog. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Alation solving and how is that benefiting you?

Being a passionate machine learning developer, Alation provide their easy to implement ML and unity catalog to seamlessly integrate with hosted platforms on Databricks since most of my use-cases or projects is to solve real-time examples in healthcare and finance sector which benefits me to connect with Alation applications. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Financial Services
AF
Enterprise(> 1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Seller invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Alation?

What is most helpful about it is how simple it is to add policies and terms to the catalog. Combining this with easy data dictionary upload helps data stewards and SMEs effectively memorialize metadata to the data marketplace. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Alation?

The cost per data steward is a bit high is one thing. Another thing is having to pay to enable column level data linieage. Sure you can get by with just table level, but column level lineage is key for impact analysis. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Alation solving and how is that benefiting you?

Alation's data catalog is helping improve data literacy via it's layout. Users better understand that information exists about the data they care about because this metadata is now exposed to them in the data catalog. In addition to data literacy, it helps users make confident choices in the datasets they consume because they can now see not only who else uses the data but also queries that have been shared for others to use. This benefits the company because it cuts down on duplication of effort but also helps create a standard process. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Jeff C.
JC
Business Data Manager
Enterprise(> 1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: G2 invite on behalf of seller
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Alation?

My favorite feature of Alation is the lineage graph. We actively reference the lineage graph during our routine discussions in our organization.

Currently exploring the API and getting more familiar with the Health API Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Alation?

I'm looking forward to being able to catalog our ML models in the near future. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Alation solving and how is that benefiting you?

We're currently cataloging our customer and partner data and ensuring our stakeholders have a source of truth for all customer data references Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Blake C.
BC
Managing Consultant
Enterprise(> 1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: G2 invite on behalf of seller
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Alation?

Integrations ability and automated lineage Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Alation?

Current install of Alation is on prem and only a few years old. Already being pushed to cloud which is good but costs more money and several new features that make Alarion a much more complete tool are only available in new cloud tool and those features are still relatively new and unproven. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Alation solving and how is that benefiting you?

Data lineage and certification documentation Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Liz R.
LR
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Alation?

It's just stunning how easy it's been to stand up Alation, get it customized, get data sources connected and get people interested in using it. I love the interface and the intuitiveness of it and our programmers have been working with the APIs, working from Alation recipes that get us most of the way there out of the box. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Alation?

We've found no down sides of Alation - the experience has been positive for us in every aspect, from implementation to curation. Some features that we would like are still in development, but we knew that going in and Alation has been open about what's coming and when we can expect it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Alation solving and how is that benefiting you?

Alation is making data governance straightforward and organized across many teams and many stakeholders. Regulatory compliance and practical daily data use is made much easier by a central tool that's accessible to all of those stakeholders. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Response from Michelle Cloutier of Alation

Thank you for the glowing review! We're glad you enjoy using Alation and appreciate its strong data governance capabilities. We appreciate your candid feedback and look forward to creating the features and functions you need!

Douglas S.
DS
Data Architect
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: G2 invite on behalf of seller
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Alation?

I very much enjoy Alations data cataloging tools and ability to create a data community within my organization that exists in a central location. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Alation?

It is sometimes difficult to get some users to participate, though that is not really a.fault of the software itself. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Alation solving and how is that benefiting you?

Central location for business to find the data they need without looking in different folders for different excel docs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

CC
Enterprise(> 1000 emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: G2 invite on behalf of seller
Incentivized Review
(Original )Information
What do you like best about Alation?

Firstly, the Alation team are very customer centric. Regular, consistently useful comms, on point, every time. The product is very easy to deploy in AWS, and connecting to our DW and reporting systems has been mostly a doddle. We've had a few issues in connecting to Kafka, but that has been because of our setup.

The product is really intuitive to use, and quickly highlights gaps in current processes around documenting data sources within a DW environment. The fact that it can pull lineage from warehouses is really useful for impact analysis. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Alation?

I think there is a gap within the specific Power BI connector, in that I'm sure there is more metadata behind the scenes that Alation can tap into, but doesnt. For example, where people are creating reports in Power BI, making use of calculations and functions, it'd be super handy to be able to identify these, and compare for duplications across the org. Otherwise, there isnt much to complain about! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Alation solving and how is that benefiting you?

Alation is underpinning our business and technology strategies, and is enabling a more digital way of working. It helps us identify what we have, what condition its in, who's best to talk to as a SME, and federated governance across teams. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Response from Michelle Cloutier of Alation

Hi Chris - thanks very much for the positive review of Alation! It sounds like Alation will be a foundational piece of your tech stack. As you may know, we are working to improve and enhance our Power BI connector. Thank you for the specific suggestions, which I will pass along.

Verified User in Retail
AR
Enterprise(> 1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: G2 invite on behalf of seller
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Alation?

Governance across the company is critical and we're slowly getting there. It's simple as a google search. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Alation?

Not as user friendly on the backend. Some things require research. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Alation solving and how is that benefiting you?

Nothing yet as we're still soft launching but long term, we want to solve for data trust and ease of finding things. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.