Data Platform Stewardship Buyer Guide — December 3, 2025
Collibra, Alation, and Informatica IDMC dominate stewardship programs that need lineage, policy enforcement, and trusted data quality evidence for Data Act, ESAP, and HIPAA obligations.
Executive briefing: Stewardship platforms are expanding beyond catalogs to deliver operational lineage, policy enforcement, and quality service-level indicators that can be audited. Collibra Data Intelligence Cloud, Alation Cloud Service, and Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) supply embedded workflows and APIs that keep privacy, AI governance, and ESG teams aligned on a single inventory. All three maintain SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001 attestations; Collibra GovCloud and Archer-hosted IDMC for Government offer FedRAMP Moderate options for agencies and defense contractors.
Cross-link to the Data pillar for governance patterns and playbooks: Zeph Tech data coverage. For disclosure expectations, review the ESAP regulation briefing and EU Data Act SME fairness guidance.
Buying criteria
- Lineage depth: Require automated column-level lineage for cloud warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift) and lakehouses (Databricks) with API support for custom pipelines.
- Policy enforcement: Ensure access policies and retention rules can be pushed to data platforms and logged for PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR evidence packages.
- Data quality SLAs: Look for profiling and rule-based checks that emit metrics into observability stacks so critical domains show uptime, freshness, and null-rate trends.
- Operating model fit: Preference for role-based workstreams (stewards, custodians, owners) and prebuilt workflows that match RACI charts already used by compliance teams.
Collibra Data Intelligence Cloud
- Delivers cataloging, lineage, and policy workflows in a unified UI with granular responsibilities for data owners, stewards, and custodians.
- SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001 validated; Collibra GovCloud provides a FedRAMP Moderate-authorized deployment for U.S. public-sector teams.
- Pricing is subscription-based by data domain and user tier; API and lineage add-ons often priced per compute hour when scanning large warehouses.
- Deployments land in 8–12 weeks: 3 weeks for metadata connectors, 3–4 weeks for workflow tailoring, and 2–4 weeks to prove retention and masking controls with audit.
Alation Cloud Service
- Combines behavioral analysis (query log parsing) with policy center tooling to recommend owners and flag unused data sets, improving stewardship coverage.
- Holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001 certifications; Alation’s private cloud option lets regulated buyers pin storage and compute to preferred regions for residency obligations.
- Pricing uses capacity-based tiers aligned to catalog objects and active users; governance packs for data privacy and AI governance add fixed annual fees.
- Typical rollout: 6–10 weeks to onboard core sources, publish glossary terms, and integrate with identity providers for stewardship workflows.
Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud
- Extends governance with data quality, privacy-by-design scanning, and active metadata pushbacks into Snowflake, BigQuery, and SAP landscapes.
- Informatica maintains SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001 attestations; IDMC for Government on AWS GovCloud provides FedRAMP Moderate controls for agencies.
- Consumption pricing is based on consumption units that meter data integration, quality, and catalog workloads; subscription commits secure lower unit costs for predictable stewardship budgets.
- Deployment windows run 10–14 weeks when privacy scanning and quality remediation are in scope; rapid pilots (4–6 weeks) focus on one domain with automated lineage and masking.
Stewardship checkpoints
- Align lineage exports with the DORA operational resilience briefing to show impact analysis coverage.
- Connect policy decisions to BIS operational resilience principles for board reporting.
- Use the data strategy pillar hub to keep stewardship runbooks synchronized with privacy and AI governance controls.