Used For

• +**Your team asks 'where's the sales data?' 50 times a week** → Natural language search finds it in seconds instead of Slack archaeology
• +**Reports break and nobody knows why** → Visual maps show exactly how data flows from source to dashboard
• +**Everyone defines 'customer' differently** → Shared business dictionary stops the confusion
• +**Compliance audits make everyone panic** → Auto-tags sensitive data and tracks who touched what
• +Real-time updates when data changes - no more stale documentation that lies to you

Best For

• >Your analysts spend more time hunting for data than analyzing it
• >Compliance is breathing down your neck about tracking sensitive data
• >Someone changes a database and three reports break with zero explanation

Not For

• -Teams under 100 people — you're paying enterprise prices to organize data you could find in a spreadsheet
• -Simple setups with one database — this is built for complex data chaos, not neat and tidy operations
• -Anyone not on AWS — it's AWS-only and locks you into their ecosystem

Pairs With

• *Snowflake (the data warehouse that Atlan maps and explains to mere mortals)
• *dbt (for data transformations that Atlan traces when they inevitably break something downstream)
• *Tableau (where executives want dashboards and Atlan shows them what data actually powers the pretty charts)
• *Slack (where Atlan sends alerts and your team asks data questions without opening another tool)
• *Salesforce (one of many sources that Atlan connects to build the full data picture)
• *Fivetran (moves the data that Atlan then catalogs and explains)

The Catch

• !Slow with large datasets — batch processing means you're always looking at yesterday's metadata
• !No self-hosting option — it's SaaS-only on AWS whether you like it or not
• !You'll need extra tools for real-time monitoring because Atlan doesn't catch data issues as they happen

Bottom Line

Turns 'where the hell is that data?' into a Google search that actually works.