Collibra Governance Reviews

Collibra Governance is mainly used as a one-stop solution for data discovery.

Using Collibra Governance means that we know the end to the life cycle of data across the team, which provides our data science and analytics team with sample data they can use to make decisions on what to do next.

Collibra Governance's most valuable features are data lineage and stewardships.

There are a lot of gaps in Collibra's support and documentation. In the next release, I would like Collibra Governance to include better integration with data ecosystem tools.

I've been using Collibra Governance for approximately a year.

Collibra Governance is stable with limited data sizes, but with bigger data sizes, you need to invest a lot in the job servers, which becomes a very costly operation.

Collibra Governance isn't that scalable.

It's very difficult to get support from Collibra.

Neutral

Previously, we used Apache Atlas and switched because it had very limited features.

The initial setup was very difficult - if you're looking at a high-availability or a production scale setup, you need to be technically sound. I would rate the ease of the setup process as two out of five. Deployment took around six months.

We used an in-house team.

Collibra Governance helps our organization, but getting a GMV or dollar value out of it is tough. I would rate its ROI as two or three out of five.

Collibra Governance is expensive - I would rate its pricing as one out of five. There are also additional costs for everything except the basic setup.

We evaluated Alation and OvalEdge.

Before implementing Collibra Governance, go through the tool very thoroughly because doing a POC or MVP is fine, but when you're looking at a production-scale deployment, it's very complicated. So explore other tools before jumping in with Collibra. I would rate Collibra Governance as six out of ten.

Collibra Governance can be deployed on-premise and in the cloud. The solutions can be used for lineage data quality, business glossary, and data cataloging.

The most valuable features of Collibra Governance are that it is user-friendly and easy to use.

The price of Collibra Governance could improve.

I have been using Collibra Governance for more than two years.

We have approximately 30 business users. 

The technical support was good from Collibra Governance.

The intial setup for Collibra Governance is mostly straightforward except for the workflows. The workflows are not that straightforward. There is a learning curve.

The full implementation took approximately four months.

We have approximately four people for the deployment and maintenance of Collibra Governance.

There are different levels of licenses. For example, some users can only do read-only licenses, and others have the stewardship license where they can give access to users.

The license for Collibra Governance is expensive.

I would recommend this solution to others. However, I am trying out a new data governance tool very soon. Collibra has bought a new data quality solution, but it is not integrated yet. We are all waiting for the integration of the data quality solution. OwlDQ is the name of the solution they have bought.

All right, sir.

I rate Collibra Governance an eight out of ten.

The most important feature in Collibra Governance is the ability to gather data or a collection of data into one repository. If a client creates a repository at his place, then it will get updated to the cloud automatically.

It's easy to operate and understand.

Also, you can have different views for business people and for technical people, and there are some helpful customizations in it as well.

Collibra is not very user-friendly in terms of lineage generation. The lineage generation process is quite tough, and it takes lots of time to understand it.

Business staff are also struggling to generate lineages and to understand them. So, it is not very user-friendly.

They need to improve support. They have so many features, but nobody is much of an expert in the market at present. If they have easy, friendly support, it will help improve the product and help understand their own product.

I worked on a project related to this solution for six months.

It is quite a stable solution.

It is quite scalable. I think in the past, they had an in-house, on-premises version, but now they have come up with a cloud version, so it's quite scalable.

The initial setup is straightforward. Collibra helped with that process, but we found it to be straightforward and not complicated.

For functional users, one or two persons are adequate for deployment and maintenance. For preparation, four to five persons should be enough for the overall job. Two people will be needed for hands on work, and two consultants who can guide the people and resolve queries will be needed as well. You will also need a project manager who can monitor everything and assign tasks etc. A total of  five or six people is more than enough.

Collibra helped with the deployment, and we shadowed them during the setup and upgrading processes.

I would rate Collibra Governance at seven  on a scale from one to ten.

We use Collibra for IT data governance, specifically for GDPR compliance. Our company is in the banking and financial institution sector and we are customers of Collibra. 

In general, this is a valuable solution for us. Collibra provides a good view of where my data is, the type of data we have across the landscape, how it's getting utilized, the quality in terms of correct calibration, and whether the integrity is uniform across the landscape. Everything is in sync and Collibra is a central repository that provides a good snapshot of understanding along with holding the integrity, confidentiality, and security of our data. 

Data discovery would be the major area that requires improvement across the landscape and I'd also like to see data redundancies. Those are the two areas where improvements could be made. A lot of countries have laws that don't allow most of the data to flow into the cloud. That issue needs to be addressed when it comes to personal data protection laws. Collibra needs to take into consideration the local laws and the concerns of those countries.

 I've been using this solution for well over two years. 

The main technical support is from Collibra which has local partners. It's not a critical application that requires 24/7 support so they're available five days a week during work hours. 

In terms of the tool, the initial set up is not a problem, but there can be many legacy factors in any organization that can affect deployment.  Implementation needs to be understood so that the tool can be aligned to the IT setup of the organization. In that sense, implementation is always a challenge. 

We deployed in-house in consultation with Collibra, and implementation took about eight months. We have about 80 users throughout our organization including CTOs, CIO,s and the board which have become more sensitive to data protection over the years. 

There are other companies with solutions in this field; IBM, Informatica and they provide a lot of competition. I believe Collibra has a good standard and is an early bird in this area, I believe they'll keep that lead as they move forward in line with this constantly evolving field. 

It's important to have a clear understanding of your IT landscape and its features and whether they really match up with the roadmap of governance in terms of compliance. Those issues need to be assessed before choosing a solution. 

This is a cost-effective product and to my mind has all the ingredients to satisfy compliance requirements as well as ease of implementation. I recommend this solution and rate it eight out of 10. 

We use the solution mostly for a client. There are a port catalog and dashboard cataloging features that they use. That said, the principal use case, even though there are a number of use cases, is using it as a business glossary for terms throughout the institution.

We're saving a ton of time. There are complex terms like year to date, et cetera, and defining what university means or what college means, and the validations between certain aspects of the organization allow us to have a single source of truth for agreements on that information pulling from whatever status system. It's basically eliminating any data systems that might have been used previously and eliminating any last-minute scramble or days of back and forth questioning from stakeholders to other analysts, trying to figure out what the single source of truth is. This product creates a central repository for terms in their metadata and provides a platform for further changes and approvals for that.

It's incredibly easy to use. As far as the user-friendly aspect is concerned, it's good. The search function within Collibra for desktop is pretty cool with many hotkeys, and especially for having to build a business glossary, if somebody's confused about a term, they can use the hotkey to pull it up on Collibra for desktop, wherever they are.

With the application installed, you don't necessarily have to go to Collibra to utilize it. 

I do like the workflow customization feature as we're able to customize workflows that give ownership to the stewardship organization rather than have to rely on out-of-the-box workflows. You make it an IT function. The IT department can set it up and then put it in the hand of the stewardship organization through customization and a feedback loop, with the stewards able to make it do what they need.

The tried and true features and functions are solid. These features develop in a very good direction as new releases come through.

The stability is good.

The scalability is there if a company would like to expand. 

There are still some new features being released and unveiled such as the certification workflows or questionnaires for dashboard certification, and stuff like that, that will improve a lot as releases go on. There are just minor things here and there that can change. 

Every time you change or publish a new questionnaire for certification, you have to basically go into the code and update the new version of the questionnaire. Just little things here and there like that will, as features improve, be improved as well. 

Much like other tools, some things can be a little bit immature sometimes.

I'm a little bit limited in some of the features that we have available. It can be a little bit clunky or require extra Windows that aren't necessarily needed. It can get a little bit over-complicated here. It would be nice to have some of the workflow functionalities a bit more usable. There could be more advanced customizations and more added features.

I've used the solution for about six months at this point. 

In general, the stability has been good. there have been no hiccups or issues of any kind. It seems to be reliable. 

The solution seems to be very scalable, from what I have witnessed so far. if a company needs to expand it, it can do so. 

It's my understanding that we have around 200 users on the solution right now. We have several admin users and 200 business users. I'm not sure of the exact size. It may even be more than that at this point. 

It's a solution we're actively using. I'd say we are using it a moderate amount. 

I haven't personally been in touch with technical support. I know my team has, however, I have not heard any feedback. I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

I wasn't a part of the initial setup process. I can't speak to how simple or complex the process was in terms of implementation.

As I was not a part of the implementation process, I'm not sure if an integrator or consultant was used to assist in the setup process. 

We're partners. 

We're using the most recent version of the solution at this time. What I've been doing is product management on developing features and workflows for the customers or for the stakeholders.

The insight I would have for others considering the solution would be that it's a blank canvas. What makes it effective is understanding the use cases very well with the customer and designing the product to appropriately fill that need. The better you can understand the use case, the better that you can design it in a user-friendly fashion and get feedback from the stakeholders and get by in and organizational and ownership of the data that are you using, the more success you're going to have.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. I'm satisfied with what we've done so far. And I'm looking forward to working with the solution in the future.

The solution that I had worked on was related to the technical implementation of metadata for capturing analytics. That said, that particular implementation missed the bus with using it for business use and getting a proper buy-in from the users.

We learned some lessons on a past implementation, and with the new implementation, we're going beyond the data catalog and looking at the OwlIQ, data quality, as well as data lineage. We're really selecting some of the best modules within Collibra's toolset.

Right now, we're just implementing it. We're still in the purchasing process, however, having experience with it, I would say a great feature is its usability on the engagement with enterprise functionality. The crowdsourcing and just making it very accessible is foundational. At the end of the day, it always comes down to terms. For example, we might be saying the same exact term, however, have completely different meanings. It brings to light just the nuances, especially within a larger enterprise organization, a global organization. In organizations of this size, we've realized just how different our terminology views are. It sheds a good light on this and helps clarify. 

The data lineage piece is very useful for us. The ability to understand data flows, where systems and changes originate, is great. A lot of time you might have something on paper that isn't necessarily working in real life. This product brings about the right visibility to have the right conversations between business and IT.

There is a good community setup around the solution that can provide insights. 

It's not necessarily a tool specific, however, with any sort of application, there's an investment as far as the way in which you need to use it. There is a lot of upfront work that has to be considered. That's just a common reality with any software implementation. There's a lot of pre-work. You just don't turn on the lights assume it's going to work exactly as you envisioned. There is input and planning required.

If anything, I would say that the licensing is one area that could get improved. We have basically three roles: an admin, an editor, and a view-only role. It is limiting. For example, we want view-only, however, if we want users to be able to approve workflows, they need editor rights. That makes sense, except it doesn't necessarily meet all the business cases we have. In some instances, you might just need proper approvals, and you are not necessarily asking anyone to edit things. Yet in order for them to approve, they must have edit rights.

The last implementation was very much focused more on IT and capturing more of the IT view of data and even data definitions really focused on data standards, such as how we're going to name the technical fields or how we're going to name the entities. This new deployment is really much more focused on not just the IT side but on the business side and the operational side. It's based more so around analytics and operational governance. I'm hoping to use more of the modules and have a better, more favorable opinion of the solution's capabilities. While overall I have the sense it's good, the last company I was with didn't have the right business partners and it really just became another IT tool, which wasn't helpful to the company as a whole.

The initial setup requires more of a trial and error approach and there isn't too much documentation available to help you figure things out. There needs to be more online support around the sharing of best practices. There are a lot of use cases and people like the tool. That said, you hear a lot of pain points around large amounts of data being ingested and creating backlogs of data that need to be cataloged and there's really no way to prioritize it. 

Ultimately, it's a tool that should help to coordinate a lot of efforts and it would be nice to be able to look at something and understand how another experience could be similar or you can get a lesson learned before you actually make it your own lesson to learn.

This is more of a data governance tool, not necessarily a centralized tool for data cleansing. However, with the data quality module, that's the next evolution that's possible. Looking at data quality issues and then ultimately not necessarily being able to correct them, there's a lost opportunity. Data changes all the time. We're measuring it all the time. It would be advantageous to build this into more of a data quality tool in which users could cleanse data that could go back to source systems. That said, that's encroaching on more of the MDM solution.

I've been using the solution for about two years or so at this point. 

It's largely a good, stable solution. This is not an MDM solution. From a governance standpoint, there are some things that Collibra does better than some of its competitors, however, there's always something about having multiple tools and getting users to accept the multiple tools. It would be great if they could partner with an MDM solution provider to give more of a seamless look and feel.

In the last implementation, I do not recall dealing with bugs or glitches. In this new implementation, it's still too early to tell. 

The scalability potential is all around the framework that's specific to the company. It'd be good to have some general best practices from Collibra's standpoint. That said, is scalable, however, first and foremost, you need to implement it and really look at how the tool is functioning out of the box before you put your own strategy on it. 

Many times though, projects as they go, you're really not afforded that freedom. You might have a specific use case and you're trying to get that implemented so you'll get a quick win from a governance standpoint and so you can continue to incrementally add value. It's a balance due to the fact that, as we're trying to provide a solution, governance is an investment for sure. While there's certainly scalability potential there are structures that need to be in place from a foundational standpoint for it to scale as you need it to.

In the last implementation, there were about 20 users on the product. In that case, it was not that extensively used. Doing a data warehouse migration from Cloudera to Azure, things were collected, however, what was missing was the business definitions and the scenario-based understanding. Due to the implementation the last time, it offered a very flat view of the data. You didn't understand how everything was related or how things were scenario-based, et cetera. You couldn't get a sense of how fields are ultimately connected, and the KPIs that they ultimately built didn't help with understanding. The intention was that it was going to be an enterprise data catalog and it missed that chance. 

I haven't been in touch with technical support. I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

The implementation is not that easy. All the sell sheets and everything makes it seem as though it's more structured. Here you have this catalog, however, in reality, you have to define the structure including the data that you're going to be collecting, how you're going to define it, what those workflows are, what the user groups are, et cetera. There's a whole change management initiative even beyond just turning it on. 

With any application, whether it's cloud-based, but especially if it's on-prem, there is a level of pre-work that needs to be done. It's not just a turn-it-on type of event. Overall, that's sometimes lost in the process.

Getting it installed and all that is pretty straightforward if you can get a system integrator, or maybe if you have the in-house knowledge, however, it's really the strategy that's behind it that makes for an easy or difficult rollout.

The community is pretty good, however, I haven't necessarily found anything that's like user groups that can help guide implementation. A lot of it is you make a mistake and you have to go back and try to remedy it. There is a lot of trial and error involved.

We handled the entire implementation ourselves, in-house. 

While I do not have a sense of the version number, I would say that we are not on the latest version of the solution at this time. 

I would advise new users looking at getting it implemented to really use the out-of-box features before you overlay your specific strategy on it. Upfront investigations and creating a repeatable framework of how this will ultimately operate are important to the success of the solution. One of the crucial early factors is to get this as part of an operating fabric within your company. There's a lot of pre-work and pre-thought that needs to be in place in that sense. Having well-engaged business folks as part of it will help with the level of success as well. This is not necessarily a big bang type of development and release. It's very incremental. You've got to think backward as far as the user experience - of how things are going to be searched and located - and bring that back to your IT process.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

We are using the product mainly for metadata management as well as some data governance practices such as roles and responsibilities set up. We're also using different workflows - mainly approval workflows or request access workflows where people can actually request access to data. We have use cases based on different teams, based on what they need. It's mainly the glossaries, such as business glossaries, data dictionaries, and report catalogs.

The product is becoming the source of truth for the different business terms, acronyms, measures, etc. At least, this is the goal. Also, I would say the report catalog where the people can go and see what reports there are and can request access to the data if they need to is great. 

The data lineage from the source up to the reporting tools has been very helpful. It's also been very beneficial to be able to run some impact analysis. The visualization property can visualize the overall picture to see how the different assets are connected. This is also very beneficial to our organization. Of course, then there's the social aspect. You can command or you can use different workflows. 

Basically, it's helped our organization in a myriad of ways.

You can tailor the solution to your needs. You can really create different office drives and different attributes or relations that you can customize for your needs, which is a great thing. 

The diagrams are really great due to the fact that there are validations. The search capabilities and the different filters are all great aspects.

It's a user-friendly tool, even for non-technical people. That was one of the reasons why we chose it. It has very good social adoption. There isn't much training needed.

The solution needs to be controlled. It can go sometimes out of hand.

The speed sometimes, especially now, since we have moved to the Collibra Cloud, has not been the best. The management of the speed of the tool is not that great. It's also partially impacted by the fact that we need to use a VPN and we have got a lot of security measures. Sometimes it's not working well together with everything else. That is the main pain point that we are having.

Occasionally we get little bugs that occur, however, this is typical.

We would like to have a data lineage feature. It's just like on a different module. That's already available, as well as some advanced connectors. 

From my perspective, I would like to see improvement in the dashboard creation, to make it easier to create a really nice dashboard, and to also be able to play with the user interface when it comes to those dashboards. 

We haven't used the solution much, however, we have used it within the last 18 months or so.

We do occasionally have bugs in the system.

Now, after we have moved to the Collibra Cloud, we have to do some re-indexing and some restarting. We are at the stage where we are getting to something of a normal state. Sometimes there are some issues, however, we hope that it's just temporary.

We need to scale it more and more, however, that's why also be moved to the cloud. We believe that it will be better in terms of scalability.

There are two types of users and two types of licensing. One group is able to alter the information. Then there are users that can see the content. We have about 500-600 people who have accessed the solution in the past three months.

I am not the one who actually deals with the support, however, I know that some people are dealing with them quite a lot. My understanding is that the quality of technical support depends on if you really emphasize the importance of the issue. Then they react quite well. You really have to make sure that you've set up the importance, the criticality, of that issue properly.

Previously, we had a tool called Samantha, which is quite a local product. It was purchased by Alteryx.

If I compare Samantha and Collibra, they are actually two different worlds. We are quite independent with Collibra and therefore, we can basically really create any kind of item by ourselves rather than using the other tool, Samantha. We were relying too heavily on developers previously. It wasn't ideal.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. I wasn't the one who was taking care of it from a technical point of view, however, if I remember correctly, my colleagues didn't have any problems with it. When it comes to the user interface and how to work everything, it was really straightforward. 

A great advantage is that Collibra has got Collibra University where you have a lot of materials and videos, and tutorials as to how to use Collibra. We also have the Collibra community and documentation where you can search for information. This is really great asset for us.

Now that we are on the cloud, maintenance in terms of updates, etc. will be handled by Collibra. We are developing our own connectors as well, and we'll need occasional maintenance for that.

We haven't specifically tried to measure any ROI. It's not something that I can accurately answer.

You pay for a one year license for the whole Collibra. Then, you have some modules which are paid separately, such as the data lineage or the privacy and security module and others or insights, so that you can access some metrics. Licensing is also based on what you pay for each alter-license. It means that, if you want someone to actually create content in Collibra, you need to have an alter license, which is quite costly.

The way it's done, it ensures that the people who actually use the solution are trained and they can correctly control the content, and how it's created and how it's governed, as opposed to having a free-for-all. It is a good model. That said, it can be costly.

We're just a customer.

We fought pretty hard to have Collibra as opposed to Axon from Informatica. For us, getting Collibra was crucial, and we're really enjoying working with it.

I'd advise people to start small and try to implement small pieces in a POC so you can gauge how it will work on a larger scale. It's important to really have a look at various use cases as well.

You really want to work to sell it to the final users so that it will have a heavier adoption rate.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use it for metadata management, data lineage, and automated governance processes. I am working on the SaaS deployment, but I have also worked on the on-premise deployment. I am currently using its latest version.

We get to see the end-to-end data life cycle or the data flow in our organization. In my previous project, I implemented the Collibra Governance solution. We got the metadata right from the landing layer, and then throughout the intermediate layer, that is, the staging layer, the application layer, and the data warehouse layer. We then connected all the metadata together. So, in one single go, you can see how your data is landing, how it is getting transformed while it is moving throughout, and who is consuming this data through the reports, and in which report it is getting used. You can see the entire snapshot in one single click, which is a great feature for an organization.

The end-to-end solution itself is great. The most valuable is the workload feature that Collibra offers. There is a vast amount of flexibility in terms of how much we can customize. It gives us a lot of options to implement for a lot of purposes.

One problem is the data lineage, especially extracting the ETL transformation from different ETL tools and identifying how the data is getting changed from one layer to different layers and how the transformation is applied. It doesn't support all the ETL tools for extracting the transformation logic. It supports some of the tools, but there are still some tools that need to be supported. 

There is also a small pain point in terms of integration. There is a little bit of change in their strategy from Collibra's end. Earlier, they used to offer two solutions. One was out of the box, and one was a custom-built solution for which they used to provide a dual connector. Now the focus from the Collibra side is more on using the out of the box connector. They are discouraging doing the custom integration. That leaves us with two problems. The first problem is that the out-of-the-box connecter is not yet enabled for a lot of systems, and the second problem is that the out-of-the-box connecter has certain limitations. If we want to tweak those as per our needs, it is not possible. However, the custom-built is still supported, and you can still build a custom integration by using the API, but it is not very encouraged by Collibra.

Its dashboard also needs to be improved. There are options to use the HTML code to customize your dashboard, but it has a lot of limitations.

I have been using it for two and a half years.

It is a stable product. In the past, whenever a new version was introduced, there were a few issues, and a few things didn't work, but Collibra has improved the quality now. In the last couple of upgrades, I have not seen such an issue.

It supports the entire enterprise's data governance, which means that you can have a vast amount of metadata and bring metadata from any system. That could mean millions of tables and columns. I haven't seen its performance deteriorate too much. It is just that when you are trying to integrate with a new system and you are also trying to profile the data, it can give some challenges with a huge data set.

It is used very heavily in my latest project. The customer has a lot of expectations. They are trying to replace the existing system and want to completely move to Collibra Governance. So, it is being used pretty extensively, and they will add more and more to it.

I would rate their technical support as medium. I have had several interactions with Collibra. The response is usually within eight hours. You may or may not get a good answer in the first go. You may have to do a follow-up, again explain the question, and then they get back.

I have some experience with Informatica EDC and Axon, which together provide a data governance solution. The main difference is that Informatica has separated the business and technical aspects of data governance. EDC or Enterprise Data Catalog handles the data catalogs, integration, and harvesting the metadata, and Axon focuses on the business aspect of data governance, such as data lineage, data quality, and workflows. Collibra has everything in one solution. As far as integrations are concerned, Informatica has the edge over Collibra. It provides more connectors and more flexibility for building custom solutions.

If you are using the SaaS version, it is very straightforward. Otherwise, it could have complications. You won't realize those complications in the beginning because the product really starts running. However, when you start bringing the metadata from different sources, you will realize that there are some configuration changes that you need to make. Maybe the connectivity is not happening, and some firewalls need to be opened. Collibra is no longer providing the on-premise option for new customers. They are asking everyone to go for the cloud version.

In terms of deployment duration, if you are using a SaaS version, it hardly takes a day to get your product up and running. Implementing the use cases is an ongoing process. It typically takes six months to a year for implementing the high priority use cases.

It does not generally require a lot of people for deployment, but it also depends on the use cases. Generally, two to four people are enough. In terms of the team, we have a Collibra workflow developer, metamodel developer, Collibra architect, and integration developer. They all handle different aspects of the work.

In terms of maintenance, it does require maintenance, and you have to keep updating it. Most of the stuff is done automatically for you, but you still need to verify your custom code to check if anything is broken.

I have worked with two or three implementations. Even though my current client has a lot of expectations from Collibra, they have not realized the full ROI. They are still exploring it and have not yet reached that stage where they can make a decision. One of my earlier customers was pretty happy and satisfied with this solution, and they did realize the ROI.

I think it is on a yearly basis, but I'm not involved with the pricing session, so I have no idea. There are several licenses for different models. You get one license per product, but a lot of features are controlled separately through different licenses. So, as and when you want to use a feature, you have to procure the license for that feature.

I would definitely recommend this solution, but I would say that before starting the implementation, just understand what the product is, what it can do, and what it cannot do. Don't focus too much on the technical aspects of the product. Data governance should be used from the business point of view.

Data governance was a new concept for me. By using this product, I got to know a lot of different aspects of data governance, and how should you go about implementing it. One main lesson that I have learned from using this solution is that don't just focus on bringing the metadata from the whole system and dumping it into the tool. It will become unreadable for other users. You will end up with too much data that no one is using. It is better to start small.

I would rate Collibra Governance an eight out of ten. There are two main bottlenecks for my use cases that can cause trouble for me. It needs better data lineage functionality for extracting the transformations. It also needs better integration. I would like to see more connectors and more flexibility in terms of integrating it with different systems.