Alation Replacement for Large Enterprises: Why Atlan Scales Better for Growing Data Needs

Updated May 09th, 2024

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The best option for Alation replacement #

Alation is a data catalog that helps organizations manage, understand, and find data across their systems. It promotes data discovery and governance by enabling users to collaborate and leverage collective intelligence.

However, with rapidly evolving data demands and complex business environments, its adaptability has been questioned. As a result, forward-thinking organizations are seeking more agile and modern solutions that can keep pace with contemporary data challenges.

Modern data teams across industries have found that Atlan is the best Alation replacement. In this article, we’ll explore what makes Atlan the ultimate choice for users upgrading from traditional data catalogs.

“Atlan could save us $300k a year in just people time” — Nasdaq

Looking for a data catalog with an ROI you can present to your CDO? Atlan is designed for adoption and embedded with automation. It helps you save time, cut cloud costs, and make faster, better decisions that lead to revenue.

Get Atlan Pricing →

Table of contents #

  1. The best option for Alation replacement
  2. Why customers choose Atlan as an Alation Replacement
  3. What customers say about Atlan as an Alation replacement
  4. How Alation replacement works
  5. Alation replacement: Related reads

Why customers choose Atlan as an Alation Replacement #

We’re observing an increasing trend of customers transitioning from traditional data catalog solutions like Alation to more evolved solutions like Atlan. To understand this shift, we surveyed these customers. Here are the three key reasons they highlighted.

Why traditional data catalog/governance tools fail

Why traditional data catalog/governance tools fail - Image by Atlan.

What makes Atlan a natural choice for an Alation Replacement? It comes down to a few factors:

  • Adoption by data and business teams
  • Automation for faster time-to-value
  • Atlan’s partnership approach
  • Lineage for a single pane of glass
  • Configurable and flexible for diverse teams and stacks
  • An extensible platform approach to leading the category

Adoption by data and business teams #


It’s not often that a data catalog tool is a hit among both technical and business users.

Technical users appreciate the product’s out-of-the-box administrative options and extensibility. Meanwhile, business users often note how easy it is to find context in their daily workflows and praise the tool’s intuitive and personalized UX.

By picking Atlan, you join a growing, knowledgeable community of data and analytics professionals.

Automation for faster time-to-value #


Atlan adopts an automation-first approach to data governance, ensuring the rapid development of a comprehensive and helpful catalog. It offers DIY, no-code integrations for seamless metadata ingestion, saving significant engineering time during tool setup. By leveraging a blend of Atlan AI and rule-based playbooks, the process of metadata enrichment becomes as automated as possible.

Atlan’s partnership approach #


Atlan champions a ‘partner not vendor’ approach, deeply engaging with users beyond typical support. Unlike others assigning just a success manager, Atlan collaborates on strategy, rapid use case adoption, and scaling innovative practices. This comprehensive support framework is parallel to none.

G2 badges won by Atlan, a testament of the Partner, not Vendor approach

G2 badges won by Atlan, a testament of the Partner, not Vendor approach - Image by Atlan.

Lineage for a single pane of glass #


Once Atlan is set up, one of its most popular features becomes accessible: intuitive, user-friendly, column-level lineage. Atlan’s end-to-end, automated lineage tracking provides technical and non-technical users with a detailed, usable view of an organization’s data dependencies. This convenience unlocks numerous benefits, including faster resolution of data issues, increased end-user trust in data through impact analysis, and a cleaner data estate.

Configurable and flexible for diverse teams and stacks #


Every organization’s team structure and data estate are unique. Atlan supports diverse users, use cases, and tools through a customizable and personalized approach.

Atlan empowers personalization through ‘Personas’ and ‘Purposes’, tailoring experiences and granular access policies for diverse user roles and groups. It extends customizability to your data estate by allowing you to capture specific details through custom metadata.

Extensible platform approach to leading the category #


Readiness for mission-critical data projects like training AI models requires a platform approach to your metadata. Atlan’s active metadata vision expands metadata use beyond traditional cataloging to programmatic applications, leveraging an open and extensible architecture for limitless possibilities.

What customers say about Atlan as an Alation replacement #

Let’s hear from former users of traditional data catalog tools to better understand their decision to switch to Atlan.

DigiKey #


DigiKey, a previous Alation customer, switched to Atlan. The key reason for the move was Atlan’s impressive end-to-end lineage view from upstream sources, which engineers highly valued. Atlan also offered a visually appealing and automated approach that was perfect for DigiKey’s data needs.

Another reason was that Atlan offered comprehensive support resources, including help videos and an educational university platform beneficial for end users. The decision was further solidified by Atlan’s deep integration with Snowflake, enabling future use cases that weren’t possible before.

“Atlan is our data catalog. We had Alation before. Atlan had the best features for us going forward, some of the stuff we are interacting with Snowflake.” Source.

Also check: Why DigiKey chose Atlan

HelloFresh #


The HelloFresh data governance team had tried two traditional catalog solutions but struggled with low adoption. An internal survey found that most data professionals can’t easily find data. 57% said it’s difficult to find data and that they are unaware of all relevant data.

For HelloFresh, Atlan’s user experience, like personalized views for non-technical users and visual data lineage, bridged the gap between data and users. A streamlined setup meant they were able to find value quickly.

"We were up & running within a few weeks. The engineering effort was very low. That was a surprise because we spent a month setting up one connector with our previous data catalog. With Atlan, we had all our major sources onboarded within a few weeks.”

“Understanding data lineage from the operational sources all the way to your dashboard was something that was very important for us. Also, understanding what the impact on my downstream consumer is if the data producer makes changes. We didn’t have that end-to-end view in our previous data catalog. Data lineage support was a big factor in switching to Atlan.”

How Alation replacement works #

If you already have Alation up and running, you may be worried about making the switch. Atlan offers a simple 3-step transition so that you can feel confident about making a quick and easy switch:

  • Glossary migration: Migration of glossary structure and enrichment resources (such as READMEs) from Alation to Atlan
  • Asset/lineage migration: Atlan supports a large catalog of out-of-the-box data connectors that allow users to connect quickly to dozens of popular sources without any custom programming. We also provide a flexible open API to address your corner cases.
  • Asset enrichment migration: We’ll migrate any enrichment you’ve done in Alation into Atlan—no need to redo all that hard work.

Additionally, a dedicated Customer Service Architect will be assigned to guide the entire migration process, working hand-in-hand to create a customer migration workflow plan. Moreover, we provide excellent developer experience resources for self-service, including platform resources at https://developer.atlan.com/ and custom packages at https://solutions.atlan.com/. This ensures that the migration process is as smooth as possible.

Learn more about kickstarting your journey from Alation to Atlan; book some time with us today.

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