Immuta adds provisioning prowess to speed insight generation

The rise of self-service analytics around 2010 changed that to some degree, but weekly, monthly and quarterly reports were still the basis for many of the insights that led to decisions and actions.

Worldwide events beginning in 2020 such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, repeated supply chain disruptions and economic uncertainty radically altered the speed that decisions had to be made, placing greater emphasis on real-time data. Surging interest in AI, sparked by OpenAI’s November 2022 launch of ChatGPT, has only heightened the emphasis on real-time decision making.

Reducing what had been a time-consuming provisioning process down to minutes is therefore crucial, according to William McKnight, president of McKnight Consulting.

“Immuta’s Marketplace and structured workflows accelerate secure data provisioning at enterprise scale, eliminating the bottleneck that slows analytics and AI initiatives,” he said. “By automating fine-grained access controls across cloud platforms, Immuta enables faster data use by both human users and AI agents without compromising security.”

Perhaps the most valuable new feature is Guardrail Policies, McKnight continued.

“While the Marketplace delivers the speed, the Guardrail Policies stand out as crucial for governance teams because they ensure the integrity and safety of the system, allowing the rapid speed afforded by the Marketplace to be sustainable at scale,” he said.

Catanzano likewise called out Guardrail Policies. But while McKnight noted that the feature fosters speed and scale, Catanzano highlighted its preventative nature, particularly with AI agents capable of taking on tasks without human involvement.

Beyond the individual features that comprise Immuta’s improved data provisioning capabilities, the suite is designed to integrate with data catalogs and other governance platforms to further speed and simplify the provisioning process.

The rise of generative AI (GenAI) and AI agents provided Immuta with the impetus for developing its new capabilities, according to Matt Carroll, the vendor’s CEO. GenAI has enabled more people within organizations to work with data, he noted. However, in doing so, it has also exposed enterprises to a greater risk of data breaches and regulatory noncompliance.

“With so many new data consumers, the challenge becomes how to make data discoverable and accessible while still enforcing the right policies and controls,” Carroll said. “That’s what led us to develop data provisioning workflows.”

While valuable for Immuta’s users, whether the new data provisioning capabilities can help the vendor stand out from its competitors remains to be seen, according to Catanzano. Immuta’s new features comprise a unified data provisioning workflow that automates processes that previously took significant time, but vendors such as Informatica also provide data provisioning capabilities, he noted.

Where Immuta could have an advantage is speed.

“Immuta’s focus on AI-scale access requests may differentiate it from traditional governance tools that weren’t built for dynamic, high-volume environments,” Catanzano said. “But … I don’t think it’s a major differentiator. All the major players moving and governing data have a strong story here, but with some nuances.”

McKnight similarly mentioned speed as a way Immuta might separate from other vendors. While many provisioning platforms show users what data exists and allow them to request access, Immuta’s automates secure provisioning.

“Immuta automatically applies the right policies — masking, filtering, anonymization — at query time across cloud platforms,” McKnight said. “It’s the difference between discovering data and actually getting governed access to it in minutes [rather than] weeks.”