In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations are drowning in information spread across countless applications, platforms, and systems. The challenge isn't just finding information. It's finding the right information at the right time while maintaining security, respecting permissions, and driving productivity. This comprehensive guide compares two leading enterprise search platforms,Glean and Atolio, to help you determine which solution best fits your organization's needs.
Both platforms promise to revolutionize how teams access and utilize enterprise knowledge, but they take fundamentally different approaches to deployment, security, and data control. Understanding these differences is critical for organizations evaluating or exploring Glean alternatives that better align with their security requirements and operational needs.
Key Takeaways
- Deployment Architecture: Atolio deploys entirely within your private cloud (Azure, AWS, or GCP), giving you complete control over your data, while Glean operates as a SaaS solution on their infrastructure
- Security Model: Atolio ensures no enterprise data ever leaves your control, addressing critical data sovereignty and IP protection concerns that SaaS-based insight engines cannot fully resolve
- Permission-Aware Search: Both platforms respect underlying application permissions, but Atolio's approach keeps all permission resolution within your security perimeter
- AI-Powered Knowledge Management: Both solutions leverage artificial intelligence to deliver semantic search capabilities, though Atolio's platform allows you to choose and control your own AI models for greater flexibility and to help avoid lock-in
- Total Cost of Ownership: While pricing models differ, Atolio's private deployment may offer advantages for organizations with strict compliance requirements or large user bases
Understanding Enterprise Search and Knowledge Management
Enterprise search has evolved far beyond simple keyword matching. Modern knowledge management platforms must understand context, respect permissions, aggregate information across dozens of applications, and deliver intelligent answers, not just links. This is where solutions like Atolio and Glean differentiate themselves from traditional search tools.
The Evolution of Enterprise Search
Traditional enterprise search platforms relied on fundamental indexing and keyword matching. Today's semantic search technology understands intent, context, and relationships between information. This evolution has transformed enterprise search from a simple tool into a comprehensive knowledge management platform that powers decision-making across organizations.
Both Atolio and Glean represent this new generation of search platform technology, utilizing AI to understand queries conversationally and deliver precise answers from your collective organizational knowledge. However, their implementation approaches differ significantly.
What is Universal Search?
Universal search, also known as federated search, enables simultaneous searching across multiple applications, databases, and systems from a single interface. Instead of switching between SharePoint, Slack, Salesforce, Confluence, and other platforms, employees can query all systems at once.
Atolio functions as an internal search engine with a brain, connecting to your organization's collective knowledge across platforms while always respecting existing user permissions. You only see information you already have access to; making it a secure, turbocharged search tool that works against your organizational knowledge base.
Atolio vs Glean: Core Platform Comparison
Deployment Model and Data Control
Atolio's Private Deployment Advantage
Atolio's most distinctive feature is its deployment model. The platform runs entirely within your own Azure subscription (or other private cloud). This means:
- Complete Data Control: Your enterprise data never leaves your infrastructure. No content is shared externally with Atolio or any third-party service
- Data Sovereignty Compliance: Deploy to your preferred region to meet legal, regulatory, or geopolitical requirements
- Zero Trust Architecture: Because Atolio has no access to your information, there's no external attack surface for your most sensitive data
- Model Flexibility: Choose and control your own AI models, avoiding concerns about corporate IP inadvertently training public language models
Atolio was built under the premise that any enterprise search or knowledge discovery platform needs to put the enterprise in full control of its own data. A system that aggregates data across platforms, many of which are running on private clouds or physical hardware, must also be deployed on a private cloud or in a datacenter, where control of all IP remains with the organization and no data ever goes to any public cloud, including the vendor’s.
Glean's SaaS Model
Glean operates as a traditional SaaS platform, meaning:
- Data is indexed and processed on Glean's infrastructure
- More straightforward initial setup and faster deployment for some organizations
- Glean manages all infrastructure, updates, and scaling
- Organizations must trust Glean's security practices and infrastructure
For many organizations, particularly those in regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, government, or companies with strict data sovereignty requirements, Atolio's private deployment model addresses fundamental concerns that no SaaS alternative can fully resolve.
Security and Permissions
Both platforms emphasize security, but their approaches differ fundamentally:
Atolio's Security Architecture
Atolio's security model is built on three primary concerns regarding data privacy and the security perimeter around enterprise knowledge:
- Prevention of Data Theft: Deployed in your environment, there's no external system where data could be compromised
- IP Protection: Corporate IP cannot leak or inadvertently be used to train public language models like OpenAI
- Data Sovereignty: Data resides exactly where you specify. In your designated country, region, or specific datacenter as required by law, regulation, or company policy
Atolio's connectors reflect the permission models of underlying systems, ensuring users can only access information they are authorized to see. This includes RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) and summarization features. Nothing gets sent to the LLM that the user can't access. This ensures that all knowledge is accessible only in accordance with corporate data governance and security policies.
Permission-Aware Search Across Platforms
Both Atolio and Glean respect underlying application permissions at the document/object level and map user identities using your IdP (Identity Provider). However, Atolio resolves all permissions within your security perimeter, whereas Glean must replicate permission data to its systems.
Features and Functionality Comparison
Search Capabilities
Atolio's Search Features
Atolio enables teams to:
- Search Across Connected Applications: Find information across SharePoint, Slack/Teams, Atlassian (Jira, Confluence), Salesforce, GitHub, and more from a single interface
- Ask Questions Conversationally: Instead of constructing complex search queries, ask questions naturally: "How do I create a purchase order in SAP?" or "What are the key challenges discussed in the #firstfriday channel?"
- Discover Expertise: Find not just documents but people: "Who is working on the Atolio JIRA project?" or "Who can give me advice on UX design?"
- Understand Context: The platform maintains a real-time collaboration graph that understands who you work with, what applications you use, and your recent focus areas to deliver relevant results.
Content Discovery and Automation
Atolio's platform serves as more than a search tool, it's a discovery engine. The system:
- Identifies relationships between people, projects, and documents
- Surfaces relevant information proactively based on your work patterns
- Enables teams to self-serve knowledge without repeatedly interrupting subject matter experts
- Provides a unified conversational interface over the specific set of knowledge you have access to
Integration Ecosystem
Atolio's Connected Applications
Atolio integrates with major enterprise platforms, including:
- Collaboration Tools: Slack, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint
- Project Management: Jira, Confluence, Linear, Asana
- Customer Data: Salesforce, Zendesk
- Development: GitHub, GitLab
- Knowledge Bases: Confluence, Notion, internal wikis
- Communication: Gmail, Outlook, Calendar systems
The platform is designed to create 100 fully permission-aware connectors, expanding coverage across the enterprise application landscape.
Glean's Integration Approach
Glean also offers extensive integrations across enterprise applications. Their connector strategy focuses on:
- Major SaaS applications
- Cloud-based systems
- Standard enterprise platforms
The key difference: Glean's connectors extract data to their platform, while Atolio's connectors work within your infrastructure.
Knowledge Management Use Cases
Finding Internal Information
Common Scenarios Where Atolio Excels:
- "How do I create a purchase order in SAP?"
- "How do I create a case on behalf of a customer?"
- "Summarize the key challenges discussed in the #firstfriday channel"
- "What do I do if my laptop has been stolen?"
- "Where are the Scooter API docs?"
- "Who is Prostetnic Jeltz?"
These queries demonstrate Atolio's ability to search across policy documents, process guides, technical documentation, and communication channels simultaneously.
Identifying In-House Activity and Expertise
Beyond document search, Atolio helps map organizational knowledge:
- "What kind of events are mentioned in the #boston Slack channel? And who is organizing them?"
- "Who is working on the Atolio JIRA project?"
- "Who can give me advice on UX design? Which team?"
This expertise discovery capability reduces the time employees spend tracking down the right person to ask, accelerating problem-solving and knowledge transfer.
Understanding Projects and Context
For project teams and cross-functional initiatives:
- "Summarize question themes in the #ask-5x25 channel in Slack"
- Get comprehensive views of project status across Jira, Confluence, Slack, and email
- Understand the decisions made and the rationale behind them
Business Use Cases Driving ROI
Sales Team Efficiency
Organizations using Atolio for sales enablement report significant productivity gains:
- 360° Customer View: Centralized access to all customer data across CRM, support tickets, communication history, and more
- Product Knowledge at Fingertips: Sales reps instantly access technical documentation and product information without waiting for Solutions Consultants
- Reduced Back-and-Forth: Questions that previously required multiple emails or Slack messages get answered instantly
- Faster Deal Velocity: Reps respond to prospect questions immediately with accurate information
One Atolio client (Cengage) reported: "We are investing in automation to drive internal efficiencies like an AI-powered search with products such as Atolio to improve the availability of product and customer information to Sales and Marketing teams and reduce the effort required to find answers to day-to-day problems. We believe these tools will significantly increase the productivity of our go-to-market teams."
Support Response Acceleration
Customer support teams use Atolio to:
- Find similar historical tickets and their resolutions
- Access internal guidance and troubleshooting documents
- Locate past fixes across all systems instantly
- Reduce resolution time and improve customer satisfaction
Employee Onboarding
New employee ramp time decreases significantly when they have:
- One place to ask questions about organizational knowledge
- Self-service access to process documentation, team information, and systems guides
- Ability to discover experts and appropriate teams for different topics
IT Assistant
Employees self-serve IT questions through conversational queries that respond based on:
- ServiceNow KB articles
- Confluence spaces
- Information spread across Teams channels
- Historical tickets and resolutions
Faster Incident Resolution
Engineering teams use Atolio to:
- Surface relevant PRs, documentation, and team context during incidents
- Ask questions that instantly retrieve technical context
- Triage and resolve incidents faster by eliminating search time
- Access tribal knowledge that might otherwise require waking up specific team members
Quantified Business Impact
Based on pilot implementations, organizations see measurable benefits:
Before Atolio:
- Sales staff spend 25% of their time searching for information
- Annual cost of search inefficiencies: $2,232,000 (for 93-person sales team)
With Atolio:
- Time spent searching has been reduced to 10%
- Annual cost of search inefficiencies: $892,800
- Yearly savings: $1,339,200
- 17% productivity gain on current team output OR
- $1,248,000 operational cost reduction opportunity through team optimization
Glean Alternatives: Why Organizations Choose Atolio
Organizations evaluating a Glean alternative often prioritize:
Data Sovereignty and Control
For organizations with strict requirements around data location and control, Atolio's private deployment is not just a preference, it's a requirement. Industries susceptible to these concerns include:
- Financial Services: Banks, investment firms, and insurance companies with regulatory obligations
- Healthcare: Organizations subject to HIPAA and patient data protection requirements
- Government: Agencies requiring data to remain within specific geographic boundaries
- Defense Contractors: Companies handling classified or sensitive national security information
- Legal Services: Law firms with attorney-client privilege concerns
Avoiding Vendor Lock-in to AI Models
Atolio's architecture allows organizations to:
- Choose their own LLM providers
- Avoid dependency on any single AI vendor
- Experiment with and deploy new models as the AI landscape evolves
- Keep AI model selection as a business decision, not a technical constraint
Cost Considerations at Scale
While both platforms require investment, Atolio's model can offer advantages:
- No per-user SaaS fees that scale linearly with headcount
- Infrastructure costs that may be more predictable for large deployments
- Ability to optimize hosting costs within your existing cloud commitments
- No data egress fees for moving information to external systems
Compliance and Audit Requirements
Organizations with stringent compliance requirements benefit from:
- Complete audit trails within their own systems
- No third-party data processing agreements required
- Simplified compliance documentation when data never leaves your control
- Easier regulatory approval processes
Atolio's Foundational Pillars
Atolio's platform is built on four core principles:
Functionality: Comprehensive Search and Discovery
Search, discover, and ask questions against the information you have permission to access across your workplace applications. The platform weaves together question answering, expertise discovery, and search in one unified interface.
Relevance: Context-Aware Results
Relevance is determined by a real-time collaboration graph that understands:
- Who you work with and your team structure
- What applications do you work in most frequently
- Your recent focus areas and current projects
- Organizational relationships and information flows
This contextual understanding means search results aren't just accurate, they're personally relevant.
Permissions: Respecting Access Controls
The platform respects the underlying permission model of your integrated applications at the document/object level and maps user identities using your IdP. Every query returns only information the user is authorized to access.
Security: Private Deployment
Deployed entirely in your Azure subscription (or preferred cloud), no content is shared externally. This architecture addresses the fundamental security concerns that enterprises face when consolidating access to sensitive information.
Platform Architecture and Scalability
Atolio's Technical Foundation
Atolio's platform consists of several key components:
Client Private Cloud Account
- Runs on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or Kubernetes
- Maintains complete isolation from external access
Models
- Support for multiple AI and machine learning models
- Flexibility to choose and update models based on your needs
User Interface
- Conversational search interface
- Deep user understanding
- Available on desktop, mobile, and web
Platform API
- System integration capabilities
- Data pipeline development options
- Custom connector development
Query Layer
- Conversational search processing
- Profile-driven prompts
- Dynamic model selection
- Multi-faceted retrieval
Data Ingest
- Collaboration graph building
- Real-time streaming
- OCR capabilities
- User and permissions resolution
Vespa Cluster
- ML embeddings storage
- Permissions enforcement
- Unified search and vector database
- Highly scalable architecture
The App Store Vision
Like Splunk's evolution from log management to a security platform, Atolio views its current search interface as an application built on a broader platform. The company is developing distribution systems for agents and applications that partners and clients can create, extending the platform's capabilities beyond search into workflow automation and business process enhancement.
Implementation and Deployment
Deployment Process
Atolio's Implementation:
- Infrastructure Preparation: Provision resources within your cloud subscription
- Integration Configuration: Connect your applications using secure, permission-aware connectorsOngoing Optimization: Monitor usage patterns and refine relevance
- Identity Mapping: Configure your IdP (Entra ID, Okta, Google Identity) for user authentication
- Initial Indexing: First-time indexing of your connected applications
- User Rollout: Phased deployment to user groups
- Ongoing Optimization: Monitor usage patterns and refine relevance
Because everything runs in your environment, you maintain complete control throughout deployment and operation.
Glean's Implementation:
Glean's SaaS model typically offers:
- Faster initial setup (no infrastructure provisioning required on your side)
- Glean-managed infrastructure and updates
- Standard integration configuration
- Quicker time-to-first-search
The tradeoff is reduced control over data location, processing, and infrastructure decisions.
Total Cost of Ownership Analysis
When evaluating enterprise search platforms, consider:
Direct Costs
- Licensing Fees: Per-user costs vs. infrastructure costs
- Infrastructure: Cloud hosting expenses (primarily relevant for Atolio)
- Implementation Services: Initial setup and configuration
Indirect Costs and Benefits
- Productivity Gains: Time saved searching for information (estimated 10-25% of knowledge worker time)
- Reduced Onboarding Time: Faster new employee ramp to productivity
- Improved Decision Quality: Better access to relevant information
- Reduced Tool Sprawl: Consolidating multiple point solutions
Compliance and Security Costs
- Data Breach Risk: Potential costs of compromised sensitive information
- Compliance Violations: Fines and penalties for regulatory non-compliance
- Audit Complexity: Costs of demonstrating compliance with data handling requirements
For organizations with strict security requirements, Atolio's architecture may reduce compliance costs and risk exposure, even if direct licensing costs are comparable.
Customer Success Stories
Cengage: EdTech Industry
Cengage, an educational technology company and early Atolio client, implemented the platform to drive internal efficiencies. CEO Michael Hansen stated on their earnings call:
"We are investing in automation to drive internal efficiencies like an AI-powered search with products such as Atolio to improve the availability of product and customer information to Sales and Marketing teams and reduce the effort required to find answers to day-to-day problems. We believe these tools will significantly increase the productivity of our go-to-market teams."
Sales Team Efficiency Case Study
The Challenge:
- Information is scattered across disparate systems
- Excessive "back-and-forth" between sales and product teams
- Slowed sales cycle, stunting revenue growth, and frustrating teams
Atolio's Solution:
- 360° Customer View with centralized access to all customer data
- Intelligent Product & Process Discovery with AI-powered search
- Seamless Collaboration aligning reps, Sales Ops, SEs, and support teams
Results:
- 17% increase in current team productivity
- OR 15% reduction in team size for the same output
- $1,339,200 annual savings on search inefficiencies
User Feedback:
- "Gives me the confidence that my company is listening to me and my struggles and making my life a whole lot easier. It's making me feel loved, and if I feel loved, I will perform better."
- “Prospects are always asking us how to do XYZ. I want one place to get a quick answer instead of going to 5 different areas."
- "It's faster and easier. The answers are more specific. I spend less time weeding through entries."
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What makes Atolio different from Glean and other enterprise search platforms?
Atolio's fundamental differentiator is its deployment model. Unlike Glean and other SaaS-based search platforms, Atolio deploys entirely within your private cloud infrastructure (Azure, AWS, or GCP). This means your enterprise data never leaves your control, addressing critical concerns around data sovereignty, IP protection, and compliance that SaaS alternatives cannot fully resolve. Additionally, Atolio allows you to choose and control your own AI models, avoiding vendor lock-in and ensuring your corporate IP doesn't inadvertently train public language models.
2. How does Atolio handle permissions across different applications?
Atolio respects the underlying permission models of all integrated applications at the document and object level. The platform maps user identities using your centralized Identity Provider (such as Entra ID, Okta, or Google Identity). It ensures that users only see information they already have access to in the underlying systems. All permission resolution happens within your security perimeter, and this extends to AI features like RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) and summarization. Nothing gets sent to the LLM that the user can't access. This architecture guarantees that all knowledge remains accessible only in accordance with your corporate data governance and security policies.
3. What types of organizations benefit most from choosing Atolio over Glean?
Organizations that benefit most from Atolio typically have one or more of these characteristics: (1) Strict data sovereignty requirements due to regulatory compliance, geographic restrictions, or company policy; (2) Operations in highly regulated industries like financial services, healthcare, government, or defense; (3) Concerns about corporate IP being exposed to external systems or used to train third-party AI models; (4) Existing private cloud infrastructure and preference for keeping all data processing internal; (5) Large user bases where per-user SaaS pricing becomes prohibitively expensive; or (6) Complex compliance and audit requirements that are simplified when data never leaves their control. That said, any organization that prioritizes data control and security may find Atolio's approach preferable.
4. How long does it take to implement Atolio compared to a SaaS solution like Glean?
Implementation timelines vary based on organizational complexity, number of integrations, and security requirements. Glean's SaaS model typically offers a faster initial setup, as Glean manages all infrastructure provisioning. However, Atolio's implementation is streamlined through
proven deployment processes within your cloud environment. While initial setup may take slightly longer than a pure SaaS solution, many organizations find that the reduced complexity in security reviews, compliance approvals, and legal negotiations around data processing actually accelerates overall deployment. Additionally, because Atolio runs in your environment, you have more control over the deployment timeline and can optimize based on your internal priorities and resource availability.
5. Can Atolio integrate with our existing AI and LLM investments?
Yes, this is one of Atolio's key advantages. Unlike platforms locked to specific AI providers, Atolio's architecture allows you to choose and control your own language models. Whether you're investing in OpenAI, Anthropic's Claude, open-source models, or building proprietary models, Atolio can work with your choice. This flexibility means you're not locked into a vendor's AI decisions and can evolve your AI strategy independently. You can also run multiple models for different use cases or switch providers as the AI landscape evolves, without changing your entire knowledge management platform. This approach future-proofs your investment and keeps AI model selection as a business decision rather than a technical constraint.
Conclusion: Choosing the Right Enterprise Search Platform
Selecting between Atolio and Glean, or any enterprise search and knowledge management solution requires careful consideration of your organization's specific needs, constraints, and priorities.
Choose Atolio if:
- Data sovereignty and control are paramount
- You operate in regulated industries with strict compliance requirements
- You require a private deployment within your own cloud infrastructure
- You want flexibility in AI model selection without vendor lock-in
- You have large user bases where per-user SaaS pricing becomes costly
- Corporate IP protection is a critical concern
- You need simplified compliance and audit processes
Consider Glean if:
- You prefer SaaS deployment with minimal infrastructure management
- Fastest possible deployment is a priority
- Your organization is comfortable with external data processing under security agreements
- You want the vendor to manage all infrastructure, scaling, and updates
Both platforms represent the next generation of enterprise search, moving beyond simple keyword matching to semantic search, AI-powered question answering, and intelligent knowledge management. Both respect permissions, integrate with major enterprise applications, and deliver significant productivity improvements.
The critical differentiator is control. Atolio's private deployment architecture ensures that your data, your most valuable asset, remains under your complete control. For many organizations, particularly those in regulated industries or with sensitive IP, this architectural decision is not just a preference but a requirement.
As organizations increasingly recognize that AI-powered knowledge management is essential for competitive advantage, the question isn't whether to implement enterprise search, but which platform best aligns with your security posture, compliance obligations, and long-term strategy.
Atolio represents a new category of enterprise search platform: one that delivers all the AI-powered capabilities of modern knowledge management while keeping your data in your cloud, under your control, always.
To learn more about how Atolio can transform knowledge discovery in your organization while maintaining complete data sovereignty, visit our website or book a demo.
