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Alation Data Catalog vs IBM InfoSphere Information Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alation Data Catalog
Ranking in Metadata Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Data Governance (5th)
IBM InfoSphere Information ...
Ranking in Metadata Management
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (29th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Metadata Management category, the mindshare of Alation Data Catalog is 11.7%, down from 19.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM InfoSphere Information Server is 2.6%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Metadata Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Alation Data Catalog11.7%
IBM InfoSphere Information Server2.6%
Other85.7%
Metadata Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2776527 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data and Analytics Consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Increases data discoverability and boosts self-service analytics through enriched metadata and intuitive search
The best features that Alation Data Catalog offers are its search capabilities and the fact that it works with many different data platforms; it is essentially platform agnostic. The other piece that I really think is important is how easy it is to use as well as to manage. What makes the search capabilities of Alation Data Catalog stand out for me is the fact that every item within the catalog is indexed and searchable, as well as the filtering features that allow you to narrow down to just the types of assets that you need. Wildcard searches are also very helpful. It is a very intuitive tool, as long as you are using the filters. Alation Data Catalog has positively impacted my organization by allowing users to answer questions that they had without trying to track down an expert. This has saved them quite a bit of time and frustration. It has allowed them to solve problems they probably would not have been able to solve had they not had the catalog. We have been measuring the curation of content within the catalog that has gone up over time, and we have also seen the number of users in the catalog increase, as well as the amount of activity within the catalog increase. We were seeing about an average of about 20% increase month over month for the last few months.
MI
Senior Data Engineer at Mohammed Mansour Alrumiah
Faced challenges with customer support and documentation but have benefited from reliable data integration over the years
As for utilizing the platform's metadata management feature, I have not worked on that feature yet, but personally, I have done that. To evaluate the effectiveness of IBM InfoSphere Information Server's data integration capabilities, if IBM is providing all the solutions we are using, then it is definitely a helpful thing. Mostly, the other thing is that it is a big area including data governance, data lineage, data management, and metadata, but every customer is not putting that much effort and money on that. They mostly migrate the data, use it, and forget it, but slowly things are changing. I am working in Saudi Arabia, so here also data governance, data management, and those kinds of things are getting attention. Regarding how scalable IBM InfoSphere Information Server is, I need to learn how to tune performance and scalability on the cloud. I am familiar with localized hardware, but on the cloud, I still have to do the work around it. In the beginning, we estimate the load and based on that, we put the hardware, but if there is continuous increase, I believe IBM also faces problems. Scalability needs to be improved because once the demand comes, you should be able to improve it, but for that, documentation on how to add hardware or resources to the software needs to be proper. I do not have much hands-on experience with that.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Alation Data Catalog provides a nice interface for connecting to the database, querying the data, and working on it."
"The most valuable features of Alation Data Catalog are the simplicity in onboarding data sources, the security in securing the data sources, and the way the various users of Alation Data Catalog communicate with each other through a messenger."
"The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the ALLIE AI feature."
"The solution is used to query MySQL clients and store data and documentation."
"Alation Data Catalog positively impacts my organization by improving data efficiency, data quality, and collaboration, allowing analysts to spend more time on analysis instead of searching and preparing, so they can just start their analysis."
"Alation Data Catalog was very useful for sharing SQL queries easily in a platform."
"Alation Data Catalog has positively impacted my organization as collaboration has definitely improved at my company, allowing us to reach out and know who owns data, which has been especially helpful with turnover and in building out the analytics side of our bank."
"This solution is extremely flexible and scalable."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Over the years of working with IBM InfoSphere Information Server, I see basically the strength of the tool, capability, and load balancing, which I see is really good."
"IBM InfoSphere Information Server is stable."
"The integration with different technologies is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"It would be good if the tool could show the output from the records while querying."
"Alation Data Catalog can be improved by enhancing their lineage capabilities to make it easier for us as users to search the lineage without having to use the Alation Data Catalog user interface."
"Alation Data Catalog doesn't support end-to-end lineage. By that, I mean the ability to trace the movement of data from when it first comes into our organization to where it's consumed."
"I notice a couple of pain points with Alation Data Catalog: they can improve on the lineage perspective and improve their data sources integration."
"The current search functionality in Alation Data Catalog is not necessarily great. It mostly searches titles, and we would prefer it to search the description and some of the source comments to find answers that we need."
"The interface is not user-friendly."
"Alation Data Catalog is not user-friendly for business users. Its user experience is comparable to a Wikipedia page, lacking good visualization."
"We have had issues setting up the connectors and getting Alation's support team to resolve issues."
"Their technical support needs improvement."
"IBM InfoSphere Information Server should be more scalable. It should have the option to change the configuration to run on a single, non-multiple node, or multi-threading processing."
"Unlike other tools, IBM tools do not provide much help from the internet, so additional support should be available."
"This solution would benefit from the engine being made more lightweight."
"There are certain shortcomings in the cloud side of the solution, where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is a little expensive."
"The platform is moderately expensive compared to the other competitors in the market."
"I don't have all the details on the pricing side, but the solution was more expensive than originally expected."
"A three-year agreement is better than a one-year rolling 12-month agreement from a price point of view. I'd recommend looking at a three-year deal because you can't stand up a catalog and produce value in 12 months."
"The licensing cost of IBM InfoSphere Information Server depends on how many users there are."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Government
18%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Insurance Company
8%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alation Data Catalog?
The platform's most valuable features are workflow automation, automated business metadata tagging, technical metadata tagging, and data integration with data quality tools or platforms.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alation Data Catalog?
I haven't had any experience with pricing, setup costs, or licensing, as I have been strictly an end user and haven't had any administrative or management responsibilities.
What needs improvement with Alation Data Catalog?
Some of the downsides about the lineage is that some of the code is quite difficult to read as the formatting is a bit ugly sometimes. Alation Data Catalog can be improved with the lineage formatti...
What needs improvement with IBM InfoSphere Information Server?
As for utilizing the platform's metadata management feature, I have not worked on that feature yet, but personally, I have done that. To evaluate the effectiveness of IBM InfoSphere Information Ser...
What is your primary use case for IBM InfoSphere Information Server?
My usual use case for IBM InfoSphere Information Server is ETL, where we take data from one source to another data warehouse solution.
What advice do you have for others considering IBM InfoSphere Information Server?
Currently, IBM InfoSphere Information Server is deployed on-premises in my organization. Mostly it is on-premises only, but slowly things are changing towards pro-cloud. It will not be a public clo...
 

Also Known As

Alation
InfoSphere Information Server, IBM Information Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesforce, Snowflake, Citrix, eBay, TripAdvisor, Albertsons, Nasdaq, Pfizer, LinkedIn, Finnair.
Canadian National Railway Company, Chickasaw Nation Division of Commerce, Swedish Armed Forces, BG RCI, Janata Sahakari Bank Ltd., University of Arizona, Biogrid Australia
Find out what your peers are saying about Alation Data Catalog vs. IBM InfoSphere Information Server and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.