Alation
Metadata Plane · Data Catalogues & Discovery
Enterprise data catalogue for search, discovery, stewardship and governance.
- Commercial
Data tooling landscape
A neutral map of the tools used to build data platforms, organised by the plane they serve: from orchestration and storage to governance, security and AI.
51 tools · 10 planes · 36 categories. Listings are editorial and unpaid; any sponsored placement will always be labelled.
Control Plane
5 toolsDecides what runs, when and how. Orchestration, infrastructure as code and CI/CD for data.
Orchestration & Scheduling
Infrastructure as Code
DataOps & CI/CD
Data Plane
17 toolsWhere data is stored and processed. Warehouses, lakehouses, open table formats, engines, storage and streaming.
Cloud Data Warehouses
Lakehouse Platforms
Open Table Formats
Query & Processing Engines
Object Storage
Streaming & Stream Processing
Integration & ETL Plane
7 toolsMoves and shapes data. Ingestion connectors, change data capture, transformation and reverse ETL.
Change Data Capture & Replication
Transformation & Modelling
Reverse ETL & Activation
Data Quality Plane
3 toolsProves data is fit for use. Tests, validation rules, data contracts and profiling.
Testing & Validation
Data Contracts
Profiling & Anomaly Detection
Observability Plane
1 toolsTells you when data or pipelines break, and what they cost. Data observability, monitoring and FinOps.
Metadata Plane
5 toolsDescribes the data. Catalogues, technical catalogues, lineage and semantic layers.
Data Catalogues & Discovery
Table & Technical Catalogues
Lineage
Semantic Layer & Metrics
Data Governance Plane
6 toolsDecides who may use which data, and for what. Access policies, stewardship, privacy and master data.
Access Policy Enforcement
Governance & Stewardship
Privacy & Compliance
Master Data Management
Security Plane
3 toolsProtects data and access. Identity, secrets and keys, data security posture, masking and tokenisation.
Identity & Access
Secrets & Key Management
Data Security Posture Management
Masking & Tokenisation
Visualisation & BI Plane
4 toolsTurns data into decisions. BI and dashboards, notebooks and data apps.
BI & Dashboards
Notebooks & Data Apps
AI & ML Plane
0 toolsBuilds on governed data. ML platforms, feature stores and vector search.
ML Platforms & Lifecycle
Feature Stores
Vector Databases & Search
All tools
51 results · showing 1–24
Amazon S3
Data Plane · Object Storage
Object storage service from AWS, commonly used as the foundation of data lakes.
- Cloud service
Apache Airflow
Control Plane · Orchestration & Scheduling
Open-source platform for authoring, scheduling and monitoring workflows defined as Python DAGs.
- Open source
Apache Hudi
Data Plane · Open Table Formats
Open data lakehouse format focused on incremental processing, upserts and deletes.
- Open source
Apache Iceberg
Data Plane · Open Table Formats
Open table format for large analytic tables, supported by many engines and platforms.
- Open source
Apache Kafka
Data Plane · Streaming & Stream Processing
Distributed event streaming platform for high-throughput data pipelines and streaming applications.
- Open source
Apache Spark
Data Plane · Query & Processing Engines
Distributed engine for large-scale data processing, SQL, streaming and machine learning.
- Open source
Atlan
Metadata Plane · Data Catalogues & Discovery
Active metadata platform for data cataloguing, discovery and governance.
- Commercial
AWS Glue
Integration & ETL Plane · ELT & Ingestion
Serverless data integration service on AWS for discovering, preparing and moving data.
- Cloud service
Azure Data Factory
Integration & ETL Plane · ELT & Ingestion
Azure's managed service for data integration and ETL/ELT pipelines.
- Cloud service
Azure Data Lake Storage
Data Plane · Object Storage
Data lake storage on Azure Blob Storage, with a hierarchical namespace.
- Cloud service
Azure DevOps
Control Plane · DataOps & CI/CD
Microsoft's suite of repos, boards and CI/CD pipelines.
- Commercial
Azure Event Hubs
Data Plane · Streaming & Stream Processing
Managed event ingestion service on Azure, with a Kafka-compatible endpoint.
- Cloud service
Azure Key Vault
Security Plane · Secrets & Key Management
Azure service for storing secrets, keys and certificates, including customer-managed keys.
- Cloud service
Azure Monitor
Observability Plane · Pipeline & Infrastructure Monitoring
Azure service for collecting and analysing telemetry from cloud and on-premises environments.
- Cloud service
Bicep
Control Plane · Infrastructure as Code
Microsoft's domain-specific language for declaratively deploying Azure resources.
- Open source
ClickHouse
Data Plane · Cloud Data Warehouses
Open-source columnar database for real-time analytics, also offered as a managed cloud service.
- Open core
Collibra
Data Governance Plane · Governance & Stewardship
Data intelligence platform for governance, cataloguing, stewardship and lineage.
- Commercial
Data Factory in Microsoft Fabric
Integration & ETL Plane · ELT & Ingestion
Pipelines and Dataflow Gen2 for ingesting and transforming data in Microsoft Fabric.
- Cloud service
Databricks
Data Plane · Lakehouse Platforms
Lakehouse platform built on Apache Spark and open table formats, governed through Unity Catalog.
- Commercial
Databricks Asset Bundles
Control Plane · Infrastructure as Code
Defines Databricks jobs, pipelines and resources as code, deployed with the Databricks CLI.
- Commercial
dbt
Integration & ETL Plane · Transformation & Modelling
SQL-based transformation framework with testing and documentation, plus a managed platform.
- Open core
Debezium
Integration & ETL Plane · Change Data Capture & Replication
Open-source change data capture platform that streams database changes into Kafka and other systems.
- Open source
Delta Lake
Data Plane · Open Table Formats
Open table format that adds ACID transactions, time travel and schema enforcement to data lakes.
- Open source
Missing a tool?
The landscape is curated editorially for now; public submissions open later. Inclusion is never paid for, and any sponsored placement will be clearly labelled.