Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management vs erwin Data Intelligence comparison

Quest Software and Microsoft are both solutions in the Data Governance category. Quest Software is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.0, while Microsoft is ranked #26 with an average rating of 8.0. Quest Software holds a 1.9% mindshare in DG, compared to Microsoft’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Quest Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

erwin Data Intelligence

Read 19 erwin Data Intelligence reviews

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2,732 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Purview Data Life...

Read 4 Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management reviews

2,132 Views
426 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

erwin Data Intelligence

Microsoft Purview Data Life...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 30, 2025

Erwin Data Intelligence and Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management compete in data management. Erwin might have an edge due to its pricing and customer support, but Microsoft Purview could be preferable for its robust features.

Features: Erwin Data Intelligence provides data lineage, governance, and cataloging, offering an integrated view of data assets. Microsoft Purview focuses on lifecycle management with advanced data classification, retention, and policy enforcement features.

Room for Improvement: Erwin can enhance its ease of use and automation capabilities, improve data visualization, and offer more integration options with other platforms. Microsoft Purview can benefit from expanding its metadata management capabilities, improving customization options for data policies, and providing better integration with non-Microsoft tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Erwin's traditional deployment model may require more manual setup but offers strong customer support. Microsoft Purview, being cloud-native, delivers seamless deployment with integrated support in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Pricing and ROI: Erwin offers a possibly more cost-effective initial setup, appealing for cost-conscious companies. Microsoft Purview, despite potentially higher initial costs, offers substantial ROI with its comprehensive data lifecycle management capabilities, making it a strategic investment.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management vs. erwin Data Intelligence Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management 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 (2nd)

Microsoft Purview Data Life...

Ranking in Data Governance

26th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Email Archiving (9th), Document Management Software (2nd), Microsoft Security Suite (29th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of erwin Data Intelligence is 1.9%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is 1.0%, up from 0.3% 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%
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management	1.0%
Other	97.1%

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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Ram-Krish

Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

A comprehensive data management solution shows potential for improvement while providing strong integration with existing infrastructure

One of the requirements is to have data leak policies and data access policies. This is very critical to enforce data governance standards, which relate to data classification, access control, data protection, and retention. It covers the entire lifecycle, helping us to protect, detect, and classify the documents. Challenges are mostly related to the security products onboarded into the bank; they have challenges in terms of those products complying with the internal standards. Sometimes, we cannot just use the DLP across the state. For example, using Microsoft products has been easy to adopt, such as OneDrive and SharePoint on-premise, but it becomes a challenge when it comes to AWS, as data also exists in S3 buckets. Testing is still ongoing, but it will eventually be done. The time it takes to scan is one issue; when we raise high-volume issues and tickets related to scanning failures, it relates to permission errors, which are technical challenges. These take time because we have high volume tickets in terms of connectivity, scanning failures, and related matters. There are also frequent change requests, especially regarding scoping or rescoping due to complexities, creating several challenges. In both organizations I work with, there are gaps, and there is no enterprise-wide data classification available. However, there are pockets of implementations for various products. Some agencies are using it, but otherwise, there's no product existing across the enterprise. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is definitely a good solution, but there is significant room for improvement from a product perspective. Reporting is another area that needs improvement.

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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

"The data mapping manager is the most valuable feature."

"The biggest impact for us is that erwin generates DDL extremely quickly. We're able to pull in metadata, map it to a target, generate DDL to create the tables, and generate SSIS packages. Previously, especially going back 10 to 15 years ago, hundreds of hours had to be spent to manually perform these tasks. This solution completely automates it and gets it 90% done. We can then pass it off to a developer to create the items in SSIS."

"The data management is, obviously, key in understanding where the data is and what the data is. And the governance can be done at multiple levels. You have the governance of the code sets versus the governance of the business terms and the definitions of those business terms. You have the governance of the business data models and how those business data models are driving the physical implementation of the actual databases. And, of course, you have the governance of the mapping to make sure that source-to-target mapping is done and is being shared across the company."

"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."

"Data Intelligence allows us to automate multiple tasks we had previously done manually, such as restructuring the metadata for our purposes, setting up ETL flows, and defining the data tables we create. It also enables us to standardize our approach and our technical processes."

"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."

"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."

"The interface is easy to use. I also like Erwin's automatic data classification and data quality checks."

More erwin Data Intelligence pros

"The system is stable; I haven't encountered any worldwide stability issues unlike other office products."

"The automatic data labeling is compelling, and we are investigating its use."

"The UI is the most valuable feature."

"Purview's built-in functionality provides immediate access to reports, streamlining the entire process."

"The impact of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management on my unified data catalog has improved a lot; the improvements I see are in the lineage, the discovery, and the labeling."

Cons

"Everything about Data Intelligence is complex. Though we've used the tool for five years, we're still only using about 30 to 40 percent of its capabilities. It would be helpful if we could customize and simplify the user interface because there are so many redundant things."

"There may be some opportunities for improvement in terms of the user interface to make it a little bit more intuitive. They have made some good progress. Originally, when we started, we were on version 9 or 10. Over the last couple of releases, I've seen some improvements that they have made, but there might be a few other additional areas in UI where they can make some enhancements."

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

"The integration with various metadata sources, including erwin Data Modeler, isn't smooth in the current version. It took some experimentation to get things working. We hope this is improved in the newer version. The initial version we used felt awkward because Erwin implemented features from other companies into their offering."

"The metadata ingestion is very nice because of the ability to automate it. It would be nice to be able to do this ingestion, or set it up, from one place, instead of having to set it up separately for every data asset that is ingested."

"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."

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

"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

"I think labeling could use a lot more AI assistance. AI implementation into labeling would be beneficial."

"The time it takes to scan is one issue; when we raise high-volume issues and tickets related to scanning failures, it relates to permission errors, which are technical challenges."

"Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management can be challenging to implement due to its complexity and dense documentation, making it difficult to get started."

"Microsoft's Purview Data Lifecycle Management preview features can be unreliable, hindering their usefulness."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is too high."

"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."

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

"The solution is aggressively priced."

"erwin is cheaper than other solutions and this should appeal to other buyers. It has a good price tag."

"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."

More erwin Data Intelligence pricing and cost advice

"The service operates on a pay-as-you-go basis, charging an extra one cent per field of metadata scanned in our data."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

10%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

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.

See all answers

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

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?

We opted for Purview Data Lifecycle Management due to its significant cost advantage over competitors. At a 95 percent price reduction, it was a clear winner. The service operates on a pay-as-you-g...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?

I think labeling could use a lot more AI assistance. AI implementation into labeling would be beneficial.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?

My major use case for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is for the classification of data.

See all answers

Comparisons

Collibra Platform vs erwin Data Intelligence

Compared 25% of the time

Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs erwin Data Intelligence

Compared 21% 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

Ataccama ONE Platform vs erwin Data Intelligence

Compared 5% of the time

More erwin Data Intelligence Competitors

AWS Artifact vs Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management

Compared 23% of the time

Alfresco vs Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management

Compared 9% of the time

OpenText Content Manager vs Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management

Compared 9% of the time

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management

Compared 7% of the time

OpenText ApplicationXtender vs Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Intelligence

January 2026

Download erwin Data Intelligence product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management

January 2026

Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management report

Download Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management product report

Also Known As

erwin DG, erwin Data Governance

Microsoft Information Governance, Microsoft Purview Records Management

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

Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management helps businesses manage data effectively, enhancing compliance and control while optimizing data usage across the organization.

Designed for comprehensive data governance, Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management aids businesses in automating data retention, labeling, and protection policies. It integrates seamlessly with existing systems, facilitating robust data management, which supports compliance and risk management efforts. Suitable for businesses seeking to consolidate data management processes, it ensures that valuable data is efficiently cataloged, accessible, and secured, contributing to informed decision-making and resource optimization.

What features should users be aware of?

Automated Data Retention: Simplifies data management by automatically applying retention policies.
Sensitivity Labeling: Offers robust capabilities to classify and protect sensitive information.
Data Insights: Provides analytical insights that help in monitoring compliance and data usage.
Policy Enforcement: Integrated tools for automating policy application across data assets.

What benefits can users expect from reviews?

Improved Compliance: Ensures adherence to regulations through automated policy enforcement.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlines data management tasks, reducing manual intervention and potential errors.
Cost Effectiveness: Reduces the need for multiple tools by consolidating data management activities.
Enhanced Security: Protects sensitive data through advanced labeling and encryption features.

In finance, Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management facilitates compliance with strict regulations, in healthcare, it safeguards patient data while streamlining retention policies, and in retail, it organizes customer data for better insights and tailored marketing strategies, ensuring data is a strategic resource across sectors.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Oracle, Infosys, GSK, Toyota Motor Sales, HSBC

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management vs. erwin Data Intelligence

December 2025

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