The 7 Major Players in Metadata Management Solutions, 2019

Metadata management solutions come in a variety of shapes and sizes to meet the ever-changing needs of organizations and their increasingly complex environments. Companies require metadata tools that can serve a number of different use cases as well. There are both small and large providers that offer options to help these organizations with both niche and common challenges, though choosing the vendor(s) that are right for your specific environment can be a daunting task.

The following providers have recently been named top-performing leaders in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions. The report, which highlights and scores the top products in the industry, features these 7 vendors as being cornerstones in the space. Each provider’s market share and product portfolios differ, which is what makes them interesting to the wider audience of data consumers. Niche and emerging vendors can only hope to replicate the kind of market presence that these companies have earned over a sustained period of time.

Here we provide a brief blurb about each and links to product details so you can learn more.

Informatica Metadata Management allows enterprises to tap into four major categories of data, including technical, database schemas, mappings and code, business (glossary terms, governance processes), operational and infrastructure (run-time stats and time stamps), and usage (user ratings and comments). Informatica creates a knowledge graph of an organization’s data assets and their relationships by applying AI and machine learning. Active metadata serves as the foundation for Informatica’s Intelligent Data Platform.

Collibra‘s Data Dictionary documents an organization’s technical metadata and how it is used. It describes the structure of a piece of data, its relationship to other data, and its origin, format, and use. The solution serves as a searchable repository for users who need to understand how and where data is stored and how it can be used. Users can also document roles and responsibilities and utilize workflows to define and map data. More than 40 percent of Gartner reference customers considered Collibra, speaking to the firm’s standing in the space.

Smartlogic Semaphore is an enterprise-grade semantic platform that allows organizations to enrich data, extract facts, and harmonize information sources. The product features a model-driven, rule-based approach that enhances the capabilities of existing technologies. Smartlogic allows users to drive self-service delivery as well as move enterprise search from keyword to semantic to find data related to a query. Gartner reference customers told Gartner that Smartlogic’s modeling, metadata transformation, and creation capabilities are top notch compared to other vendors.

ASG offers a data intelligence platform that can discover data from more than 220 traditional and big data sources. The tool features automated data tagging by pattern matching, integration of reference data, and enriched metrics. Automated business linage allows users to better understand their data, and governance capabilities include those for tracing data in the data lake and traditional sources. ASG’s EDI product offers an impressive capabilities portfolio, with reference customers touting the vendor’s support for a variety of business use cases.

Alation offers a platform for a broad range of data intelligence solutions including data search and discovery, data governance, data stewardship, analytics, and digital transformation. The product features a Behavioral Analysis Engine, inbuilt collaboration capabilities, and open interfaces. Alation also profiles data and monitors usage to ensure that users have accurate insight into data accuracy. The platform provides insight into how users are creating and sharing information from raw data as well.

Infogix offers a suite of integrated data governance capabilities that include business glossaries, data cataloging, data lineage, and metadata management. The tool also provides customizable dashboards and zero-code workflows that adapt as each organizational data capability matures. Gartner reference customers used Infogix for data governance and for risk, compliance and data value management. The product is also flexible and easy to use, and supports smaller data analysis jobs as well.

Alex Solutions is a technology agnostic unified enterprise data catalog. It features a business glossary that enables users to define and maintain key business terms and link them to physical data assets, processes, and outputs. Policy-driven data quality combines data lineage with data profiling and machine learning-based intelligent tagging. Alex also offers intelligent tagging that helps users add business context to physical data assets. Gartner reference customers report the product to be easy to implement and pilot as well.