Alation Named a Leader in The Forrester Wave^™ for Data Governance Solutions, Q3 2025

As data governance becomes increasingly critical in an AI-driven world, choosing the right solution can make or break an enterprise's ability to stay compliant, agile, and competitive. In The Forrester Wave™: Data Governance Solutions, Q3 2025, Forrester Research offers a comprehensive evaluation of the top data governance platforms—highlighting emerging trends, evolving definitions, and the growing convergence of data and AI governance.

This blog begins with the key findings from the 2025 report—highlighting the trends shaping governance in light of Forrester’s evaluation of the 13 most significant providers, including Alation, and what this means for data leaders. Let’s dive in.

Key insights and trends from the Q3 2025 report

Data governance is no longer perceived as a business blocker. According to the report:

“Data governance has outgrown its compliance roots: In today’s AI-fueled and data-saturated enterprise, it’s the control plane for trust, agility, and scale.”

The evaluation reveals a clear market shift toward agentic AI—governance systems that actively automate policy enforcement and remediation while keeping humans in the loop. Forrester writes:

“The next frontier isn’t just about managing metadata — it’s about activating it.”

The most advanced platforms now deliver self-driving governance experiences that automate classification, rule generation, and remediation. Forrester notes that:

“Agentic AI is setting the pace for the market,” enabling organizations to fuel AI models, accelerate insights, and unlock new value streams.

Buyers are advised to prioritize platforms that:

• “Infuse governance workflows with automation and AI” to scale consistency and speed.

• “Empower business users and stewards with intuitive, intelligent experiences” to democratize governance beyond central analytics teams.

• “Align governance capabilities with business value creation” by enabling reusable data assets.

These themes signal a fundamental shift: governance is no longer a back-office compliance function—it’s a strategic lever for AI readiness, business agility, and innovation. 

As enterprises push to monetize data and scale AI, platforms that enable intelligent, embedded, and business-aligned governance will lead the pack. The rest of this blog explores how Alation embodies these capabilities—and why it was named a Leader in the Q3 2025 Forrester Wave™.

Why was Alation recognized as a Wave Leader?

Alation believes its position as a leader reflects its strategy, AI-driven product innovations, and ability to deliver real business outcomes. Forrester cited Alation’s “bold vision… to organically embed governance into daily workflows and align metadata with business outcomes.” Customers also pointed to “Alation’s intuitive UX, flexible integration, and superior collaboration features as standout strengths that help drive broad adoption across business and technical teams.” 

"Alation delivers excellent capabilities in cataloging and collaborative metadata curation, with AI-powered features for data enrichment and policy enforcement."

— Forrester Wave™ - Alation Vendor Profile – Capabilities

Vision and an agentic approach

The Forrester report cited Alation’s shift from passive documentation to intelligent, agentic workflows. This transformation is already visible through:

• The Agentic Data Intelligence Platform that embeds intelligent agents across governance workflows

• A new AI Agent SDK for building custom AI governance solutions

• Leadership changes, with CEO Satyen Sangani taking a more hands-on role in product strategy

With the acquisition of Numbers Station, Alation has also added strong capabilities for generative AI and data product automation, extending its agentic vision even further.

"Alation’s differentiated strategy centers on shifting governance from passive documentation to intelligent, agentic workflows."

— Forrester Wave™ - Alation Vendor Profile – Strategy Overview

Innovative product capabilities

Of Alation, Forrester writes, “A key differentiator is its data marketplace and product builder modules, designed to operationalize governance and accelerate data-to-value workflows.”

These modules help users package, discover, and govern data as products, which is key to scaling modern data governance across distributed teams.

Other innovative features include:

• AI-native governance tools like intelligent policy suggestions

• Context-aware recommendations for stewards

• Suggested Descriptions and Semantic Search powered by GenAI

• Trust Flags to show data health and governance status directly in the catalog

"Alation has listened closely to its customer-led community and laid a solid foundation for AI governance, with early investments in intelligent policy suggestions, automated stewardship triggers, and context-aware recommendations to support scalable, low-friction governance."

— Forrester Wave™ - Alation Vendor Profile – Capabilities

Customer feedback highlights

Customers love Alation’s:

• Intuitive user experience (UX)

• Flexible integration

• Superior collaboration features 

Collectively, these features “help drive broad adoption across business and technical teams.”

Customers also pointed out areas for improvement—namely, continued investments in data observability and native data quality tools, which Alation is already addressing with a new Data Quality Agent and upcoming integrations.

"Customers highlight Alation’s intuitive UX, flexible integration, and superior collaboration features as standout strengths that help drive broad adoption across business and technical teams."

— Forrester Wave™ - Alation Vendor Profile – Customer Feedback

Who should consider Alation (according to Forrester)

Forrester states that Alation is ideal for enterprises focused on:

• Federated data governance models

• Embedding governance into everyday business workflows

• Using AI and automation to reduce manual tasks and boost compliance

If your organization is looking for a modern, open, and intelligent data governance platform that can scale with you, Alation is worth a closer look.

"Alation is ideal for enterprises embracing federated governance and seeking an agentic, AI-augmented platform to embed intelligence into everyday workflows."

— Forrester Wave™: Data Governance Solutions, Q3 2025 – Forrester’s Take

Alation believes the 2025 Forrester Wave™ validates what many organizations already know: Alation is leading the way in modern data governance. With a strong focus on automation, user experience, and business alignment, Alation continues to innovate and deliver value.

As AI becomes more central to enterprise operations, data governance must evolve. Alation is proving it’s ready to help companies meet this moment.

👉 Explore the full report and see why Alation is a Leader.

Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. For more information, read about Forrester’s objectivity here .