Atlan - Active Metadata Platform for AWS

What do you like best about the product?

Our experience with Atlan has been exceptionally positive, from initial exploration and technical evaluation to implementation and ongoing operational support. We included Atlan as part of our data infrastructure due to its intuitive user interface, robust product features, and forward-looking vision. Atlan's compatibility with the rest of our modern data stack (Snowflake, dbt, Sigma Computing) and other enterprise tools such as Slack, Google Workspace, and Chrome was a key factor, too. The Atlan team provided ample opportunity to carry out a Proof of Concept (POC) and Proof of Value (POV), which included live demonstrations of functionalities to the various data stakeholders. Additionally, Atlan's pricing and support model were both reasonable and adaptable.

Setting up the platform was swift, with a few hours of onboarding calls spread over a week. We could quickly run scans on our Snowflake instance and set up integrations with other platforms like dbt. Later, when support for Sigma Computing was introduced, we could integrate the same on our own. Features such as web search of metadata and detailed column-level lineage for root cause and impact analysis were an instant hit with our data power users.

The Atlan customer success team was meticulous in providing us with the necessary support to improve the adoption and engagement on the platform. They consistently strive to understand our specific use cases, deliverables, and business outcomes to provide optimal support. We appreciate how the Atlan team has supported us so far with active metadata management and helping improve the governance of our data and machine learning products.

What do you dislike about the product?

A strong product roadmap backs the vision, but the communication regarding the upcoming features and releases can be better. The concepts of Personas and Purpose overlap, and explaining them to most stakeholders is difficult.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Helping find information about data is easier in a self service way that reduces dependency on data engineers and helps them focus on writing code. The lineage helps during impact analysis and troubleshooting. Establishing a better data governance is easier with a tool like ATlan.

What do you like best about the product?

The ability to apply definitions and tags for almost any data asset is useful, especially the feature to attach existing documentation as a resource. Great search feature, and ability to propagate tags downstream from objects.

What do you dislike about the product?

The UI is sometimes difficult to navigate, and there are some screens that may be more suitable to view as a table. There's also sometimes a steep learning curve to go from basic read-only use (or single asset management), to enabling mass-tagging/documentation efforts.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Atlan is supporting our initiative to tag and classify all sensitive data in our source system and downstream applications. Being able to propagate tags and view lineage has been really useful.

What do you like best about the product?

Atlan’s user-friendly interface encourages engagement across the board, regardless of technical expertise. The data lineage feature provides a clear, visual layout of our data stack, which has been particularly helpful in onboarding new hires by giving them immediate insight into our data architecture. The glossary feature is crucial for establishing a common understanding of terms and metrics throughout the company, with the ability to assign ownership to these definitions. Linking glossary terms to related assets further reinforces this shared understanding and accountability.

What do you dislike about the product?

The integration with Teams could be more refined. Specifically, it would be beneficial if requests for approval could be directed to the appropriate data owner or individual, rather than just an administrator.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We lacked a consolidated view of our overall data landscape, and there was a clear need to standardize corporate terminology and metrics with defined lines of responsibility. Atlan addressed these challenges by providing a unified platform that supports our data governance and operational goals.

What do you like best about the product?

Having used other tools in this space Atlan has a much better administrative and user experience than other tools.
•It was easy to set up and integrate with our tech stack.
•Navigating it feels intuitive which is critical to a metadata management system you need to put in front of multiple user personas.

They are also developing at a rapid pace which features getting releases each week and an eagerness to hear/respond to feedback. Some of the newer features aren't perfect but they are generally equiavalent to competitors and at the pace of development I see they pulling ahead.

Support has been great - we actually get responses from people that want to help instead of it going into a black hole.

What do you dislike about the product?

Would like to see usage reporting built into the product to help tell the story on its value and ensure we are positively driving adoption. Right now this is only available from a 3rd party source which wasn't mentioned to us and we'd have to get approval to use.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Its integrating metadata from multiple systems and exposing it to our users in a easy to consume way so its organized, Discoverable and trusted.

What do you like best about the product?

Its UX and its deployment added its data lineage and the easy integration with multiples sources.

What do you dislike about the product?

Its technical supports is to slow in the resolution and sometimes not very accurate

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Its resolve the data catalog and data lineage by organizin the company to self service information.