Collibra Governance Reviews

My company, a financial institution, decided to implement data governance for data analytics, et cetera. We designed an entire metadata management system using Collibra. Initially, we designed the metadata management, and then we enabled the receivership at the organization-level and also roles and responsibilities. After that, we created the lineage between the technical and business assets, and we automated the process of insertions and updates.

The enterprise data analytics and data science team are able to use the solution for analytics, utilizing the filtered finalized metadata from Collibra, which helps them acquire accurate details. 

There's also a lot of time-saving and they're able to use appropriate data sets. We have a bunch of data sets, however, we've been able to bring and filter, and finalize the proper data sets for our users. These data sets can be used on the data mining side, where, due to the accurate datasets acquired, appropriate data is available and better results are achieved. They're much more likely now to be able to provide good input to the company based on sound data. 

The data security lineage is the solution's most valuable aspect for our organization.

The product offers very good artificial intelligence capabilities.

The automation process is very strong.

The whole company can utilize the product. Once we ingest the metadata from the technical side and we enable the security, if any user wants to know anything from business asset information to which component it is been assigned where, et cetera, they can do so. They don't need to be technical or get a technician to pull the data for them. 

There is a lineage, which helps us to track down and drill down on details. It helps with data analytics and data science. 

Earlier we used to have a third party tool like MuleSoft for connectors. On the architecture side, they are introducing new features that allow us to phase out the third-party connector.

Collibra itself is building and providing some out of the box workflows. These features allow you to automate the process and strictly align the compliance of the company.

There are many new aspects of the solution, however, I haven't yet gone through the documentation to see if they really help solve for issues or not.

Many features have recently changed their appearance and I need to re-learn how they work.

Sometimes, if a client needs a specific customization, we cannot do it directly. The client needs to reach out to Collibra and request the customization.

The technical support is very poor.

I've been using the solution on a few projects now.

We don't have any concerns regarding stability. It doesn't crash or freeze. It doesn't have bugs or glitches. It's reliable and easy to use.

The solution scales well for the most part.

Collibra, as a SaaS model, defines every functionality. What happens is that when you are trying to deploy the solution to the customer, some customers may have a lack of knowledge or, because of compliance issues, they might not like the SaaS approach. That said, if a new customer wants to deploy governance but they do not have any knowledge about governance and they've chosen the Collibra, the solution will 95% meet their expectations. Customers that are well-versed in governance will also be mostly pleased in its capabilities.

The issue is that if you are a client and you want me to customize the product in a particular way, while the solution may not allow my team to make the customization, if the client directly reaches out to Collibra, no doubt they can make it happen for the client directly.

Technical support could use some improvements.

One of the concerns I have is the Collibra response time. For example, if you have an issue and you log the call with Collibra for support, the response from Collibra will take a long time. 

For every service request of support from Collibra, the response time is slow. For each of requests, as well they say the client needs to take coaching. They recommend the user to go for coaching. They need to change that support process. The answer can't always just be "learn more". 

Even with debugging issues, they respond properly. There are just a lot of problems with the way they handle calls from us. 

I have previously used different solutions. I've used, for example, Infomatica Axon. Out of all the products I've used, however, I really like Collibra.

There is another product called Alation, which is a very sophisticated product in the market of governance. Alation has more advanced features than Collibra. While it may be expensive, it might be worth the cost to get something more sophisticated. It's possible that Collibra might be updating to those more sophisticated features in the future. Cost-wise, compared to the Alation, Collibra is a cheaper product and much more economical. Also, on the web interface side, Collibra is more hands-on and it's easy for any customer to add and update. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. The Collibra product itself is pretty easy to implement and they have it designed in a way that can make the process pretty smooth. They've defined all of the processes so that they are easy step-by-step scenarios.

That said, the implementation of governance from a customer perspective is not so easy. That's not the product's fault. When we try to implement governance, a couple of stakeholders might agree, and others might not agree. There are internal differences. It depends on the customer.

With any new project, when you are launching it, you will face these roadblocks from the customer's side from time to time. From Collibra side, the product is very smooth and easy.

The deployment also depends on the customer, and therefore it can take anywhere from months to years to fully implement the process.

Typically, you need a minimum of three people to handle the deployment process. If a company's size is bigger, or their requirements are more intensive, you may need more.

Post-deployment, as well, you will need someone to handle some occasional maintenance on the product. How many individuals you may need will depend on the parameters. Governance is an ongoing process. It's not a set it and forget it scenario. Tweaks need to consistently be made.

As a consultant, I never really get into pricing and licensing. However, comparatively speaking, I'd say that it's not as expensive as other options. It's probably about average within the industry. It's not so expensive that companies can't afford it. 

I work on governance modules. I'm not related to Collibra. I'm an external consultant and a governance consultant. We adopt any technology which is related to governance. We prepare ourselves and we'll learn it and we'll get hands-on experience so that we have a good understanding of it for our clients.

My experience with Collibra has been amazing. I've been working on Collibra within a couple of fields and my journey through Collibra was very fabulous all the way across.

I'm using the SaaS version of the solution. It ensures we're always up to date on the latest features, etc.

I'd recommend the solution to others. I'd rate it at a seven out of ten. I'd rate it higher, however, the technical support is really quite bad.

I am using it essentially for the GDPR implementation over here in Europe. This is my second project on Collibra. Before that, I have worked on the CCPA part for a US-based project.

I have worked on an on-prem solution and a solution on the cloud. I was the one who had created all the components on AWS because our client was not ready to move onto Collibra's cloud solution, but I believe they will be moving to SaaS soon.

We are on version 5.7.5. Version 5.7 is the latest, but because we're not on SaaS, it's quite tedious to upgrade each and every environment. We have four environments or five if you include what the developers work on, so it is a bit tedious to upgrade. 

In Europe, it is quite good for documenting your DPIAs, and you have to do that if you have to be compliant with GDPR. That's one of the main use cases that I see over here.

The catalog feature is definitely valuable because it makes ingesting the metadata of any application quite simple. You don't have to do things manually. You can just schedule an import, and it will just refresh the metadata of whatever application you want. That's what I like. I usually work on the technical side, and other than that, I usually create integrations. I integrate Collibra with different environments or applications.

I'm a developer, so I cannot vouch for the business, but for me, it is quite developer-friendly with the Java API interface and the REST API interface that they have provided.

It is good for creating dashboards based on the needs of each and every role. It can be user-specific or group-specific. We usually create dashboards and give them to our business users, and they are quite happy with that.

It should have more integrations with things like CyberArk because its main purpose is GDPR implementation. We have to have more scope for things that implement more privacy. CyberArk makes sure your credentials are vaulted and your things are secure when you're creating your integrations or connecting to an application. I do believe that they are working on this feature.

I've been working with Collibra for almost two years.

It usually is stable. It doesn't really require maintenance, and it doesn't go down. The only maintenance that is required is the upgrade, which is not that frequent. However, after our latest upgrades, when we ran some of the workflows, the form doesn't respond. Even if you open developer options on your browser and if you try clicking next or back, it doesn't work, but if you close it and then you open the form again, it works. I don't know why that's happening with this version, but because we are planning to move to SaaS, I'm not really bothered about it so much for now.

It is pretty new for this client, and we are in the initial phase. All the applications are not even on board yet. We are slowly trying to move towards the ideal scenario where we have things from your catalog to even integrations with Denodo and Feebo. These are the standard things for virtualization and everything.

We definitely know the capabilities of the tools. I have been working on it technically for almost a couple of years now, and we also have business users and consultants who have implemented a proper governance structure for the entire organization including everything from your roles and responsibilities to the line of businesses and how they should be. We have people who are experts at that, so it's slowly evolving. Our users are data stewards, business stewards, subject matter experts, IT owners, data owners, and stakeholders.

Most of the time, as soon as I raise a ticket, they revert back, and I get the correct thing. However, sometimes, for things like the workflow issue that I just mentioned, they aren't that good, but usually, they're good.

I have worked on SAS DataFlux, Ab Initio Express, and Ab Initio Metadata. All of them are data governance tools. Some of them are data quality engines. Collibra is not one. 

Collibra Governance is totally different from Dataflux. DataFlux usually is just for your data quality. That's the data quality engine that will run your data quality rules and store the data in a place, just like Trillium or exPress IT. After that, you have to integrate it with something like Ab Initio or Collibra to govern the data quality results that are coming from it.

I have also used the Collibra Privacy & Risk. It is the GDPR Accelerator. In fact, we cannot call it an accelerator after 5.7.

If you have someone who knows what they're doing, then it is pretty straightforward, but you have to get the business on board as well, and then you have to show them how to use the tool. That's usually a challenge for any new data governance tool that you get into place. 

If you're on-prem, then the setup is pretty straightforward, but if you're deploying on the cloud, it becomes a bit tricky because usually what happens in banks is that each line of business has its own AWS account. You use your servers to scan their metadata, but then you have to establish some connectivity between different accounts and all those things. That part is usually a bit complex, but if you're on-prem or if you're on SaaS, then it's going to be pretty straightforward.

I have actually created a Jenkins pipeline that works with the latest installable file that Collibra gives. It just does everything by itself. It is pretty straightforward for me now, but reaching that point took a while and a decent amount of effort. We have a DNS resolver using Route 53, which will then go to a load balancer, and the load balancer essentially is then connected to your receive tool that has the tool hosted on that. We take care of security groups and make sure that no unauthorized access takes place. We have implemented Azure AD authentication. Our client uses Azure AD for all their authorization, so we implemented that using the SAML functionality that's available in Collibra.

If there is any change in the asset models, then we have a team that does that. As of now, if we need someone who will deploy the actual tool or upgrade it, then I'm the one who currently takes care of that.

Most of our clients have seen ROI from using Collibra. Some of them are still getting up to speed. Usually, financial institutions have legacy systems where people will just use Excel for their DPIAs. It is somewhat of a drastic change for a lot of them, so it sometimes takes time to see the ROI.

I am not so much aware of price details. Initially, there was an add-on NuSoft license to use the DVC connector that NuSoft gives to create integrations, but Collibra is now phasing out of it slowly. Collibra is cutting ties with them is what we have been led to believe, and we have started developing on Spring Boot, which is open source.

I would recommend this solution to others, and I would ask them to directly go for SaaS instead of going for on-prem because you get a lot more features. I believe the license is the same or similar, but I'm not really aware of the price points.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Collibra is that being compliant is important, and we are helping our clients do that. You must have read about H&M and Citibank. They got charged a lot.

I would rate Collibra Governance an eight out of ten. Because I'm not involved with SaaS, I am keeping two points away for that. After using SaaS for a year, I can say more, but for now, it is eight.

I worked with this solution a few months ago and the main use case of Collibra was as the central metadata tool for the enterprise. The plan was to have all of our data dictionaries, our business glossary, to expose data lineage through Collibra and show all of the relationships and connections between our various tables and databases and the actual semantic business layer, in Collibra. It was a way to unify our technical metadata with our business metadata and with our actual applications.

Recently, a lot of work has been done around sensitive data elements. Collibra is really a good tool for centralizing a list of elements that could either be first or second order PII and connecting the top policies around those specific PII elements to the systems they're found in, and how they are implemented. If they're used as different names in different systems, that's valuable because it's helping the company meet its goals in terms of new legal regulations for the EU as well as for California. Those two are our GDPR and CCPA which are the two most recent policies from that domain. It's also very good for data quality issue management. Collibra is essentially the main tool for that. It's a valuable tool in many different companies.

The interface itself is very useful. I think what I find most useful about the tool, if I'm looking at it from the perspective of a data user, would be the search capability. The fact that I can search for any data elements that are in the table and there will be a pretty comprehensive list that are either identical or very similar to one another in the tables where they are found. I think in terms of sourcing, it's really valuable. I also think that the ability to connect your business metadata with your technical metadata, is something that's very valuable from the perspective of the business. People on the business side need to understand where data is coming from, how it's connected. Doing that through one centralized repository, or document, is useful.

The issue may be the way it's been implemented in my company but, for Collibra to be really useful, what's missing is an easy way to connect to different data sources and different types of data sources and actually ingest and profile some of that data. That's the trouble we've always had in getting wider adoption of the tool. Unless there's a mandate from the enterprise data office or the like, regular users are not going to use the tool for really robust business use cases without having some actual data in there. I know there is some out of the box capability for this, but I think it needs to be easier for Collibra to actually ingest and run some basic profiling on the data itself. That's currently missing from the tool. 

I think that today this is a stable solution which wasn't the case in the past. For a couple of years, there were certain outstanding issues and bugs that took a really long time to fully address. Those have been taken care of at this point.

It's a very scalable tool. There is a ton of metadata in there. If they were to roll this out to other lines of business and start getting more adoption, I don't think they would have a problem with scalability. I think the problem is really with getting that adoption in the first place.

The company is very hands-on providing support and solutions but I think the problem is that they might be stretched a little thin. It's a fairly small company, I believe, and there have been cases where we had to wait months to get support to fully patch something that was wrong in the tool. It's even more of an issue if you are connecting Collibra with another third party tool because you have to get everybody on the call. You have to make sure that they're corresponding, following up in a timely manner. It's just not easy.

I have previously used the Sandbox versions of Alation, and Informatica. I remember Alation being overall very similar to Collibra. I think Collibra's UI may be a little better. I think it's very user-friendly. I would say definitely superior to Informatica. I haven't really heard many good things about the Informatica business glossary metadata solution although it has been a while since I have seen or used that and it may have changed. I definitely think Collibra is the gold standard in terms of combining user experience with the actual capabilities. Again, at the end of the day, it's really a matter of implementation as to how good it actually is and how positively it will be adopted.

There have been some issues with the implementation and the adoption rate has not been high. It's not being used extremely extensively. It's being used for those use cases already mentioned, meaning at the enterprise level for identifying PII and complying with regulations. It is being used for data quality issue management in finance but as far as I'm aware it's not being used for data quality issue management for other lines of business.

I don't exactly remember the pricing but my impressions from everybody that I've talked to is that it's an expensive tool. It's more expensive than its competitors. It may well be worth it in terms of how it's being used. I think it's a superior tool, but it's also a premium tool. 

Before purchasing a license or licenses for Collibra, you need to have a data strategy or data governance and a management strategy defined beforehand. You need to have at least some semblance of an idea of how you want the various spaces and communities in Collibra to be organized. Obviously, certain things will change as you get familiar with the tool, but you can't just wing it. You need to have a strategy that also takes into account other tools and other solutions that you want Collibra to be connected to because there could be an issue where maybe you have a data lineage tool that is getting upgraded in three months from now, and your current version of Collibra will be better suited to connect with that tool once it's been upgraded. You're never going to be able to know 100% beforehand when those types of events will happen, but you need to have some kind of strategy in mind. This is where you really need the investment in data governance and management before you define the tool that you're going to use. That has to come before any implementation of Collibra. 

It's a big tool, so it can potentially be difficult to implement if you don't have the right investment in place before deployment. It's also user-friendly with a lot of great out-of-the-box capabilities. There is some room for improvement in certain areas, but overall it's a good solution. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

Collibra Governance is a stable solution.

The solution's data lineage is a little difficult and will not support all the source systems on the database.

I have been working with Collibra Governance since last year.

Collibra Governance is a scalable solution.

Collibra Governance's documentation is clear. We can get all the documents from Collibra University.

Collibra Governance's initial setup is complex.

It takes more than 15 to 20 days to deploy Collibra Governance.

Collibra Governance is an expensive solution.

Collibra Governance is a good tool that has some pros and cons.

Overall, I rate Collibra Governance a seven out of ten.

We use the solution to organize data. The IT team has access to the data and knows where it is stored, but when it comes to legal compliances and various regulations, the business itself does not have control over where the data is stored and how it is stored. Typically, the business wants to have control over where the data is stored, the various data classifications, and data sensitivity. That is the main reason why we use Collibra Governance.

I appreciate the range of features it has. Based on the reviews of some of the other tools we use, we find that the other tools lack in certain areas. If I had to choose a comprehensive tool across all the fields of data governance, I would opt for Collibra Governance.

The most valuable feature is the Technical Lineage. The fact that you can trace the auditability of a particular field or attribute across various systems is very useful.

There are a few things that need improvement. From a usability perspective, customers usually find some areas of the solution a bit complex. It takes a long time for the customers to get used to the UI and the interface. Another thing that the customers complain about when they opt for Collibra is the pricing. There are fees for additional features which mess with the customers' overall budgets.

I've been using Collibra Governance for about two and a half years.

It is a very stable solution. I would give it a nine out of ten. It works very well compared to other solutions on the market.

The scalability of the solution is good. I give it an eight out of ten.

The response time of technical support is typically high.

Neutral

Nowadays, most customers are looking into Microsoft Stack, so we use Microsoft Purview as well, although Calibra Governance is our preferred choice since it's much more stable than Purview.

Up until now, Collibra Governance has been the market leader and is always the first one to add new features. Purview tries to bring out a lot of features as fast as possible, but those features are not very stable and have a lot of bugs. Purview has the upper hand when it comes to the usability of the app system. It is easier for customers to understand the feature list while using Purview. For example, after using both solutions for a few weeks, they usually have a better grasp of Purview than Callibra Governance.

Since it is a SaaS platform in a way, the solution is deployed on Collibra cloud. The deployment is pretty straightforward since Collibra deploys it on its own. It takes about a week to get the core of the system up and running. After, we configure it to fit the specific needs.

On a scale from one to ten, the simplicity of the setup would be an eight.

Collibra Governance's pricing is based on its features. You get what you pay for. There are other solutions that are cost-effective but lower quality. With Collibra, you get a fair-value product if you pay a bit more.

I would not recommend using the Big Bang approach with Collibra Governance. You should understand the bigger picture of what you want to do. Start off with a few systems and four small modules. Get feedback from the business and then continuously evolve it. It is better to have the implementation spread out over a one-year period than have it crammed down within three to six months while trying to implement everything at once.

I would say that Collibra Governance is suitable for small to medium businesses. 

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use this solution for workflows and for specific use cases. For our retail and insurance clients, we meet governance requirements by using all the features that Collibra provides. We do most of the work using workflows and connectors. We build connectors where the data will be extracted from a third party tool and  input in Collibra.

We have 40 to 50 team members using this solution. We have three admins who manage this solution. 

Workflow is very helpful and assessment are good features. I really like the structure of this solution and how it is compartmentalized.

There are certain processes that involve a lot of manual work, specifically when searching for attribute assignments. It would be better if we could do this via APIs. 

In a future release, we would like to have rules. We would like to have Regex Expression that scans data and to monitor quality. 

I have been using this solution for four and a half years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. 

We do get most of our support questions answered precisely, but not all of them. We have needed to do some online learning. 

We have previously used Informatica and Alation. 

Collibra has a better workflow while Informatica does not offer automation. We rely on the automation that Collibra offers.

In terms of governance, I prefer Informatica because it offers different tools and data. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

I would advise others to have a meta model before they get into Collibra so that they can use the features that Collibra provides. They should have a proper architecture design ready before starting implementation. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

I am part of implementing the workflow through it, setting up the glossaries, and importing the assets to Collibra Governance. 

I would say customization is the most valuable. The workflow is very good and has been embedded. It also has a great user interface.

I would like to see a feature using the runtime dashboard. As of now, we can create the dashboard using the snapshot of the report. But I would recommend having a dashboard that runs the data on the back end.

I have been using Collibra Governance for the past eight months.

I am finding that there is stability in Collibra Governance.

It is scalable and we have the ability to add more users.  Currently, we have one hundred and fifty users.

I was not involved during the setup.

I would say definitely worth the expense. Data governance takes time to see the output and results.

I would rate Collibra Governance an eight out of ten.

I have been working on Collibra for a data governance assignment. Along with that, we also use Ataccama for data quality purposes. It is a Collibra/Ataccama mixture that we use.

We would like to have out-of-the-box automation. We have leveraged some of the out-of-the-box workflows. Collibra does have the workflows such as the creation of business assets. We designed tools to tag the sensitivity information in Collibra and embedded scripts into the workflow. We then deployed that workflow so the user can upload a sheet with metadata and the tags will get tagged across those columns.

Collibra's lineage is a very powerful feature. We have integrated Collibra with Azure and ADLS storage and we create lineage diagrams using the two tools.

This solution does not have an out-of-the-box connector for the cloud platform. If a client does not want their data sent out of their own server, it will be very difficult to ensure this. You can install Collibra Jobserver and DGC on your machine, but you cannot install a newer solution. This is a restriction for us. 

We have been using this solution for one and a half years.

This is a stable solution. If you have data sources for which Collibra can provide an out-of-the-box connector, then it is stable. You can schedule your job to pull metadata or data out of your source system, with Collibra as a connector. However, if you have something out-of-the-box which Collibra does not support as a connector, that is a challenge. 

If you have Teradata or Oracle as a system, you can build that lineage into thw Collibra platform but if you want to build something on Azure, there is no direct way to do this because they don't support that.

This is a scalable solution. 

Collibra are very supportive. If you need anything, they have a customer support portal where you can raise a ticket and they reply immediately. 

Positive

Collibra does have its own university so when we started this assignment, we went through the courses. After that, it was quite easy to complete the setup. 

This is a very good tool and they have upgraded many features including an ADF connector and ADLS connector. You can write your own connector and customize it in the workflow.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.