Ataccama data governance

The Ataccama ONE data management platform covers data governance, data quality and master data management. Compared to specialist data catalogue products, it has a broader range of functionality since it has mature and highly functional data quality capabilities, as well as a master data management hub. The product can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises, with most newer customers opting for cloud deployment. Over three hundred customers use the data catalogue, over half of the complete Ataccama customer base. The product competes with specialist data governance products like Collibra and Alation as well as broader data management tools like Informatica. Customers are from a wide range of industries, though the largest verticals are financial services, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and retail.

One unusual aspect of Ataccama is that they survey their customers in detail about the benefits they have derived from their projects. In a recent survey, for example, customers reported 30-50% better productivity, a 10-25% reduction in spending e.g. via quicker finding of defects, two to four times lower risk of fraud and data breaches and 2-8% efficiency increase from better outcomes of data management.

In my experience, it is quite rare for software vendors to carry out such in-depth analysis of customer benefits, beyond merely basic customer satisfaction surveys. It is something that should be encouraged, and doubtless gives customers confidence that the vendor is interested in the long-term success of their projects, and does not lose interest once the payment for the software license has cleared. Customers include T Mobile, who used Ataccama in a huge data classification project involving 22,000 databases and 5,000 applications. Other customers include RSA, Societe Generale, Avon and Heineken.

Customer Quotes

“Ataccama has been pivotal in helping T-Mobile secure our vision of understanding our customers so well, we know when they have problems almost before they do.”
Daniel West, Data Management Lead, T-Mobile

“Data lineage is one of the most critical elements, … enabling root cause analysis.”
Piotr Pietrzyk, Head of Data Governance, Avon

“The direct contact to the team here to the technicals, you do not always have in other companies.”
John Reimers, Master data program manager, Marti Group

In terms of the data governance area specifically, it has a data catalogue, business glossary, workflow, data lineage, policy management, data quality (profiling, merge matching, data enrichment etc), data observability and monitoring etc. In other words, it has pretty much the full range of capabilities that you would expect from a data governance tool. The product has a knowledge graph that can visually show relationships between data, and this is interactive, so for example you can focus on one particular data area and switch to a detailed view to see information like the data quality scores and statistics for that particular piece of data. Data lineage is provided organically to a degree, though there is also a partnership with data lineage specialist Manta. All this range of functionality is delivered via a unified user interface, since Ataccama has built its software from scratch rather than assembling it through acquisition. Other than the data lineage partnership, just about the only OEM of other software is the niche area of customer name and address validation, which it does via Loquate, software used by almost all data quality vendors these days.

Ataccama provides an integrated platform ranging from data governance through to data quality and master data management. All this capability, other than a couple of very specialist areas such as name and address validation, is provided by software that was developed from the ground up to work together, rather than being patched together from various acquisitions. Consequently, Ataccama ONE is well suited for companies that want to implement a data governance solution that will not just be a stand-alone solution that documents the state of play with their data. Using this technology, they can move beyond this into data quality improvement and remediation, which will be a foundation for initiatives such as digitisation, and enable artificial intelligence initiatives with a sound basis of good quality data.

The Bottom Line

Ataccama ONE is well suited for companies that want to implement a data governance solution, but also want to move beyond this into actual data quality improvement and remediation, all using the same product suite.