Global Data Excellence DEMS vs erwin Data Intelligence comparison

Quest Software and Global Data Excellence are both solutions in the Data Governance category. Quest Software is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.0, while Global Data Excellence is ranked #39. Quest Software holds a 1.9% mindshare in DG, compared to Global Data Excellence’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Quest Software users are willing to recommend the solution.

erwin Data Intelligence

Read 19 erwin Data Intelligence reviews

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2,757 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Global Data Excellence DEMS

Read 2 Global Data Excellence DEMS reviews

362 Views
362 Comparison Views

0% willing to recommend

erwin Data Intelligence

Global Data Excellence DEMS

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

Global Data Excellence DEMS and erwin Data Intelligence are competing in the data management and governance space. erwin Data Intelligence seems to have the upper hand due to its robust feature set, although Global Data Excellence DEMS offers favorable pricing and support benefits.

Features: Global Data Excellence DEMS focuses on semantic modeling and automation capabilities, which streamline data governance. erwin Data Intelligence provides comprehensive data lineage and impact analysis features, offering a clearer data flow overview and advanced analytics tools that enhance its value proposition.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Global Data Excellence DEMS boasts a straightforward deployment process with responsive customer service. erwin Data Intelligence offers flexible deployment models that adapt to various organizational needs, although it may present a steeper learning curve. Its support is reliable but can be less immediate than DEMS.

Pricing and ROI: Global Data Excellence DEMS presents competitive setup costs, providing a budget-friendly option with quicker ROI for small to medium enterprises. erwin Data Intelligence, although requiring a higher initial investment, promises significant long-term ROI through its versatile features and strong analytics capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Global Data Excellence DEMS vs. erwin Data Intelligence Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Global Data Excellence DEMS vs. erwin Data Intelligence

December 2025

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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

erwin Data Intelligence

Ranking in Data Governance

16th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

AI Governance (3rd)

Global Data Excellence DEMS

Ranking in Data Governance

39th

Average Rating

0.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of erwin Data Intelligence is 1.9%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Global Data Excellence DEMS is 0.8%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Governance Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
erwin Data Intelligence	1.9%
Global Data Excellence DEMS	0.8%
Other	97.3%

Data Governance

Featured Reviews

Jog Raj

Senior Consultant at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Automated lineage and business glossaries have improved data understanding and collaboration

I am open to answering a few questions about erwin Data Intelligence and sharing my opinion about the product. Regarding the analytic part of the product, I find it very interesting that erwin Data Intelligence has its own inbuilt reporting toolset, with a new version coming out in January that will be AI-powered. This means you will be able to write analytical reports and questions based on the metadata and data lineage, making it more powerful than the current version, as AI will assist in creating those reports and performing analysis on the metadata. I find that the time taken to realize value from erwin Data Intelligence can be quite long. Creating a data catalog and developing data lineage takes significant time, and I expect that AI will help accelerate the process of creating data products by streamlining the steps involved. I can recommend erwin Data Intelligence to other users. I would rate this review as an eight out of ten overall.

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Alejandro Subia

General Manager at Datia

Great language features allow users to interact with the solution in their own language, and ROI can be seen within weeks

The initial setup is completely straightforward and not complex at all. The system is not invasive. It connects directly through your agents to your database. There's no integration or migration process needed, and it's very simple. The time to go live is minimum. You can have it running in two weeks. Since it's a solution for corporate governance, you need to have a data governance steering committee that's going to drive the project in the organization. One of the key benefits of the solution is that it's directly for the user, so you don't need anyone else for setup but the real user, the person that wants to get the best out of their data. You start with the business owner, and they define their business needs. They see what data you need, how you're going to use it, and what's going to be corrected. Then you start playing the data stewards, and that's all that you need.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"They have just the most marvelous reports called mind maps, where whatever you are focused on sits in the middle. They have this wonderful graphic spiderweb that spreads out from there where you can see this thing mapped to other logical bits or physical bits and who's the steward of it. It's very cool and available to your business teams through a portal."

"We use the codeset mapping quite a bit to match value pairs to use within the conversion as well. Those value pair mappings come in quite handy and are utilized quite extensively. They then feed into the automation of the source data extraction, like the source data mapping of the source data extraction, the code development, forward engineering using the ODI connector for the forward automation."

"The solution gives us data lineage which means we can see an impact if we make a change. The ability for us to have that in this company is brilliant because we used to have 49 data stewards from some 23 different groups within six major departments. Each one of those was a silo unto itself. The ability to have different glossaries — but all pointed to the same key terms, key concepts, or key attributes — has made life really simple."

"Data Intelligence creates a single source of truth for all of our metadata. This solution is better for data warehousing, but the metadata features speed up our development work. It's easy to create and manage mappings because we can export them to Informatica and pick up the work where we left off."

"Overall, DI's data cataloging, data literacy, and automation have helped our decision-makers because when a source wants to change something, we immediately know what the impact is going to be downstream."

"The biggest benefit with erwin DI is that I have a single source of truth that I can send anybody to. If anybody doesn't know the answer we can go back to it. Just having a central location of business rules is good."

"The main benefits end users receive from erwin Data Intelligence include saving time and money while streamlining processes."

"Data Intelligence has provided more profound insights into legacy data movements, lineages, and definitions in the short term. We have linked three critical layers of data, providing us with an end-to-end lineage at the column level."

More erwin Data Intelligence pros

"It is not only a software solution. It is also based on a direct policy. You get a methodology for data governance and the solution that supports this methodology, which makes things much easier. In addition, this is the only solution right now in the market that has an approach directly directed to the value. By value, I am referring to a tangible value raising money. It has an aspect that is called governed by value. We only focus on the data that is actually bringing a monetary value to your organization or your business process. It is so much simpler working around this system. It has a lot of intelligence embedded in it, and it does a lot of things automatically. It just hooks on to your virtual databases, and you are ready to go in hours. It is an all-in-one solution in which you get data governance, data quality, business transformation, and business excellence."

"The most valuable feature is the semantic linguistic artificial intelligence that allows the user to have contact with the system in their natural language."

Cons

"We chose to implement on an Oracle Database because we also had the erwin Data Modeler and Web Portal products in-house, which have been set up on Oracle Databases for many years. Sometimes the Oracle Database installation has caused some hiccups that wouldn't necessarily have been caused if we had used SQL Server."

"Really huge datasets, where the logical names or the lexicons weren't groomed or maintained well, were the only area where it really had room for improvement. A huge data set would cause erwin to crash. If there were half a million or 1 million tables, erwin would hang."

"It's a little bit clunky. I think a lot of these features were bolted on, and they don't necessarily transition smoothly in the interface. I would like to see a little more cohesion."

"The versioning can sometimes be confusing because we use the publishing feature for the mapping. Technical analysts sometimes have two versions, and they should know that the public version is the correct one."

"Another area where it can improve is by having BB-Graph-type databases where relationship discovery and relationship identification are much easier."

"The solution's Arabic language processing is limited. The results are limited when you use the interface in Arabic."

"If we are talking about the business side of the product, maybe the Data Literacy could be made a bit simpler. You have to put your hands on it, so there is room for improvement."

"There was a huge learning curve, and I'd been in software development for most of my career. The application itself, and how it runs menus and screens when you can modify and code, is complex. I have found that kind of cumbersome."

More erwin Data Intelligence cons

"It could be nice to have a little update on the menu to get it more up-to-date with current trends and to make it pop out more when you visit the site."

"Its interface could be simpler. Sometimes, you need to go through many clicks in order to find something in the software. You need to move from one thing to another to find something."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable and competitive. When you get into forward and reverse-engineering, the cost could go up. However, if you are a large organization, you would probably be able to access different packages. If, however, you don't need forward and reverse-engineering, then the price is relatively cheap."

"We operate on a yearly subscription and because it is an enterprise license we only have one. It is not dependent on the number of users."

"Smart Data Connectors have some costs, and then there are user-based licenses. We spend roughly $150,000 per year on the solution. It is a yearly subscription license that basically includes the cost for Smart Data Connectors and user-based licenses. We have around 30 data stewards who maintain definitions, and then we have five IT users who basically maintain the overall solution. It is not a SaaS kind of operation, and there is an infrastructure cost to host this solution, which is our regular AWS hosting cost."

"erwin was at a good price. The federal government wouldn't buy something if the pricing wasn't good."

"erwin's pricing was cheaper than its competitors."

"The price is too high."

"The licensing cost was very affordable at the time of purchase. It has since been taken over by erwin, then Quest. The tool has gotten a bit more costly, but they are adding more features very quickly."

"The licensing cost is around $7,000 for user. This is an estimation."

More erwin Data Intelligence pricing and cost advice

"This is the only company that I've worked with that has a very good way of thinking and placing itself in the buyer's shoes. They offer a pretty competitive price. They understand that the market is different in our economy for different clients, which makes it easier to get the products into the market. If needed, they are pretty open to adjusting the price on the case-by-case scenario. They understand the Latin American market. This is something that has been impossible with other companies or data governance care providers. The prices were much higher for these companies, and they don't understand our economy and market. There are a lot of local taxes that we pay locally to get any solution down here. To give you an idea, there is more or less a 60% increase in the price of any product that comes to Ecuador."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

10%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	14

No data available

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with erwin Data Intelligence by Quest?

The dashboard in erwin Data Intelligence is customizable, and you can easily create different views. However, you are confined to the widgets that are already provided, so the customization is some...

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What is your primary use case for erwin Data Intelligence by Quest?

erwin Data Intelligence serves two primary use cases: one is where people use it as a data catalog, which is one of the main ones, and the other is for traceability and lineage.

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What advice do you have for others considering erwin Data Intelligence by Quest?

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Comparisons

Collibra Platform vs erwin Data Intelligence

Compared 25% of the time

Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs erwin Data Intelligence

Compared 19% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs erwin Data Intelligence

Compared 10% of the time

Alation Data Catalog vs erwin Data Intelligence

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management vs erwin Data Intelligence

Compared 6% of the time

More erwin Data Intelligence Competitors

SAP Data Governance vs Global Data Excellence DEMS

Compared 52% of the time

Ataccama ONE Platform vs Global Data Excellence DEMS

Compared 48% of the time

More Global Data Excellence DEMS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Intelligence

February 2026

Download erwin Data Intelligence product report

Buyer's Guide

Data Governance

January 2026

Download Global Data Excellence DEMS product report

Also Known As

erwin DG, erwin Data Governance

No data available

Overview

Erwin Data Intelligence drives automation, supports data catalog and literacy, and offers Smart Data Connectors for efficient metadata handling. Its customization flexibility and integration facilitate enhanced data governance, visualization, analysis, and compliance.

Erwin Data Intelligence offers automation scripts that accelerate development, integrated data cataloging, data profiling, and lineage analysis to streamline information management. Users appreciate its capability in metadata harvesting, code engineering, and infrastructure integration. The tool provides flexibility to enhance governance and data visualization. While it performs well, users have noted challenges with API robustness and interface complexity, and there are opportunities to improve workflow integration, AI features, and large dataset handling. Companies rely on it for metadata management, automation of metadata mappings, and data governance to support compliance and literacy.

What are the main features of Erwin Data Intelligence?

Automation Scripts: Speeds up development processes through powerful scripts.
Data Catalog: Supports comprehensive data mapping and profiles for better analysis.
Smart Data Connectors: Efficiently handles code engineering and metadata harvesting.
Customization Flexibility: Adapts to existing infrastructure for seamless integration.
Comprehensive Visualization: Empowers data visualization and standardization processes.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Increased Development Speed: Automation scripts notably enhance development efficiency.
Improved Data Governance: Streamlines processes, supporting compliance and business definitions.
Effective Integration: Seamlessly fits with ETL tools and existing workflows.
Enhanced Data Literacy: Supports data literacy initiatives with robust cataloging features.
Comprehensive Impact Analysis: Facilitates thorough analysis for informed decision-making.

In industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail, organizations implement Erwin Data Intelligence for efficient metadata management and governance. It assists in automating lineage and mapping, supporting ETL procedures while enhancing compliance and data literacy efforts. Its flexibility and integration support create valuable data insights and governance improvements.

Quest Software

The Data Excellence Management System© (DEMS) is a complete integrated cloud-based system (internal or external) that enables organizations to accelerate the maximization of the business value of organization’ strategies and transactions while minimizing operational costs. It provides a factual value-driven collaboration that engages end-users from all levels in the ultimate value creation.

DEMS fits the maturity of your organization functions and resources. It establishes accountability and responsibility throughout the organizational structure and links the data assets to the value flows to predicatively govern business strategies.

Global Data Excellence

Sample Customers

Oracle, Infosys, GSK, Toyota Motor Sales, HSBC

Givaudan, Firmenich, Bacardi, Manitowoc, Romande Energie, Noveli, BNP Paribas, Michelin, IUCN

Buyer's Guide

Global Data Excellence DEMS vs. erwin Data Intelligence

December 2025

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