CRN Exclusive: Collibra-Immuta Alliance Gives Data Governance Enforcement A Boost

Data management software startup Immuta and data governance technology developer Collibra are integrating their products in a bid to make it easier for businesses and organizations to establish and enforce data governance and compliance policies.

The strategic alliance will provide the two vendors' channel partners with an opportunity to sell a more complete big data management and governance solution.

"If it's good for the customer, it's good for the channel," said Sunil Soares, founder and managing partner of Information Asset, a Harrington Park, N.J.-based solution provider that works with Immuta and Collibra.

[Related: CRN Exclusive: Data Management Startup Immuta Debuts Inaugural Partner Program]

As data volumes explode and as a wider range of employees gain access to data, data governance is becoming a bigger management challenge for businesses and organizations. That includes establishing and enforcing policies that spell out who can access what data and what they are allowed to do with it.

Collibra markets a data governance platform that includes a data catalog and a system for developing and encoding data governance policies. Immuta develops a data management system for data scientists, making it easier for them to find and manage the data they need to develop the data models used for business analytics and machine-learning tasks.

The two companies Monday will unveil an alliance under which their software has been integrated, making it easier for businesses and organizations with both vendors' products to create and enforce data governance policies and remain in compliance with regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation that went into effect within the European Union earlier this year.

"Data is a critical component of digital transformation … data analytics drives digital transformation," said Stan Christiaens, CTO of New York-based Collibra, in an interview with CRN. With businesses expanding their efforts to monetize their data, there is more need to put controls in place to reduce the risk of data misuse, he said.

Immuta and Collibra also will announce that they have developed links between their platforms, allowing Immuta administrators to build and automatically apply global semantic-based policies using Collibra metadata tags. That makes it possible for data governance and data science teams to rapidly author complex data access policies and use the Immuta data management system to enforce the Collibra-generated data governance policies, according to the companies.

"That's where the combination of the two technologies is so important," Christiaens said.

The companies estimate that there is already about a 50 percent overlap in their customer bases, as Collibra users look for ways to extend the reach of data governance policy management.

"It's a win-win for both of us when we're both in a customer space," said Steve Touw, co-founder and CTO at College Park, Md.-based Immuta.

The growing use of data analytics, especially by everyday information workers, and the push to monetize data assets are driving the need for better data management practices and data governance policies, said at solution provider Information Asset’s Soares.

Information Asset already partners with both Immuta and Collibra, providing data management and data governance solutions and services, including consulting and systems integration services around their software.

Soares said the integration work done by the vendors will allow partners to offer a more complete data management/data governance solution to customers. They can also focus more on policy and management issues and less on technical integration chores, he said. "It will enable the broader discipline of legal engineering," he said.

Touw said partners can create service practices to help customers translate data protection laws into governance policies and develop data governance best practices.

While there are no plans to sell the companies' product sets as bundled solutions, they do plan to conduct multiple joint marketing events in 2019, including several field events and workshops, the companies said.