Collibra Platform 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.

There is a master glossary which includes all of our business fields. The fields are related to particular lines of business such as account numbers. We then build business rules around these fields and complete data integrity checks. 

We plan to increase our usage of this solution over time. We will have to use other functionality within this application as it is currently limited. We currently have 12 team members using this solution. 

This solution is user friendly and offers multiple functionalities. It operates like a kind of a repository that allows you to find anything about a particular data set or field.

This solution could be improved with the the addition of process diagrams to help the many users of the platform understand all the fields.

We have used this solution for six months. 

This is a stable solution. 

The initial setup was straightforward. It was made easier due to the access we had to the Collibra team. The deployment took three months and involved three to four people.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 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.

I'm not a part of the tech team. I'm definitely part of the master data management, wherein we are providing services with respect to master data. Our services are focused on just the business-specific areas such as pharma commercials and pharma supply chains, and we have also built the lineage in R&D areas.

In some specific use cases, we are mapping the processes, the respective sources and basically using the entire asset model of Collibra, starting from process, to attributes, to data modeling. We are tracking everything in Collibra.

Metadata management is one of the key aspects of the product we really appreciate. 

The lineage is one of the important features as well. We felt the asset model is very good. 

We have tried implementing some of the out-of-the-box workflows of Collibra however, we have also used some customized workflows. Customized workflows in terms of data stewardship, assigning basic roles and responsibilities, for issue management, et cetera. They are very useful in setting up the proper governance. Previously, our metadata and repositories were scattered. Since using Collibra, they're all coming into a centralized location. 

Overall, it is a good tool, due to the fact that, with other tools, in some or other way they are lacking certain capabilities.

There are extract, transform, and load tools wherein you can track the data lineage. You can track technical lineage, though not exactly proper lineage. That said, Collibra is a good tool to track, everything starting from process to the attribute table column level. 

It is user-friendly. I could easily go into the Collibra UI and explore the key features.

The solution has very good online assistance. Collibra University is definitely a great help. There are all of these free resources wherein wherever you are stuck, you can go and check and come back and fix items.

What we have done is, we have internally set up a self-service process. We could set up a self-service process within Collibra wherein business stakeholders can come and they can onboard themselves on Collibra. My team specifically is just educating them and helping them following the best practices of Collibra asset model and community. We are setting up their roles and responsibilities, community managers, the manager stewardship, et cetera. We can set everything up so that users can come and onboard themselves.

Right now, its maturity is at, I would say, a moderate level. The plan is to expand it to use it for full maturity. It cannot be directly integrated as a data quality tool, for example.

Collibra doesn't provide support for integration for SAP Info Steward directly with Collibra. Going forward, we are planning to use Collibra and trying to replace other, I would say, other peripheral tools in the architecture so that we can make it more automated and have proper governance control in that.

In general, the solution isn't quite in a nascent stage, where we are using the data quality rules, business rules, everything we are exploring how to implement and then further integrating it with other platforms and use cases with respect to business areas. 

I haven't used the solution for very long. I joined my organization almost eight to nine months ago, however, I've been using it for the past six or seven months. It's been under a year at this point. 

The solution is stable. We can definitely rely on it. If it's a storage solution, other maintenance, and other cost perspectives come into play. However, we are not using it that way. It does not have storage capability. We are exploring how to better complement that with a Data Modeler. That said, we have no issues with it crashing or freezing and there are no bugs or glitches.

I have not tried to expand the solution and therefore cannot speak to the scalability of the product.

The solution is extensively being used. It's likely that we might increase usage.

Right now it is limited to a few use cases, however, Collibra has been identified as a solution that should be used to scale up. It should basically be used under full maturity. We are trying to basically onboard many, many more businesses. 

For now, for example, we just have a pharma supply chain. However, we are in touch with the other stakeholders. We are trying to convince them by showing them the capability of Collibra, so that they can better manage their data.

The objective is to onboard people on Collibra and no other data governance tool. This is one tool which, will be a place of central governance. There have been some businesses that are using Ataccama or SAP MDM. However, Collibra is the one that is supposed to grow further. There is no plan to stop using it.

Our company is very much in touch with technical support. That said, I am part of the master data management team and therefore I do not contact them directly. However, the core tech team definitely is regularly in touch with the Collibra tech support team. 

I personally have just attended a couple of sessions with Collibra consultants, wherein they provided an overview of what they have done for GSK until now.

My entire team is new, so we had a couple of sessions with Collibra folks. They provided very good support and a very helpful overview.

I was not a part of the initial setup. I joined the company after it was implemented. I cannot speak to the implementation or deployment process. I have no insights into that aspect of the product.

Collibra initiated the implementation somewhere around July 2019.

While I do not have too much insight into the licensing aspect of the solution, I can say that we are not charged monthly. We might have to pay on a yearly basis.

I can't speak to the pricing. I'm unsure as to if it is expensive or reasonably priced. 

We are not a reseller. We are likely only a customer and end-user.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're currently using. I don't know ht eversion number off-hand. 

I would recommend the solution to other organizations. There are not many competitors in the market for checking the data lineage and there are some data modeling tools. It's just that it's more about how an organization visualizes and how they want to track the lineage. Collibra is definitely a good tool from a governance perspective.

Right now, our plan is to basically use the Collibra lineage entirely, in data lakes, in metadata management, et cetera. Basically, we want to integrate everywhere so that nothing bypasses the governance.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the solution at a seven.