Immuta, the leader in data access provisioning, has officially announced a new integration with Alation to connect the latter’s Data product Marketplace with its automated data access workflows.
According to certain reports, the stated integration makes it possible for users to discover data products in Alation and request access through Immuta, while simultaneously streamlining what has historically been a slow, bureaucratic process. This involves bringing requesters and approvers together through a unified workflow, as well as allowing each stakeholder to take action in parallel and make data access decisions quickly, securely, and at scale.
“The new Immuta capability embedded in Alation allows users at GRAIL to seamlessly discover data assets in the catalog and directly request access with a single click,” said Ganjanan Lankar, associate director of software engineering at GRAIL. “This streamlines the approval process by notifying approvers and leveraging Immuta’s automated risk-based recommendations. The integration reduces friction between discovery and access, enabling faster, compliant use of data for analysis.”
To understand the significance of such a development, we must acknowledge that, even though organizations have made significant progress in the context of cataloging and surfacing data, getting actual access to data remains a challenge. We say so because manual approval workflows, legacy governance systems, and inconsistent policy enforcement would consistently leave business users and AI agents waiting days or even weeks to use the data they need.
As for where do these delays emerge from, most are the result of IT service request tickets via platforms like ServiceNow which were designed for application access, not data access.
In case things weren’t bad enough, adoption of data products and AI strategies has only added pressure, as data teams are now forced to choose between complex workarounds or over-provisioning. Against that, Immuta-Alation integration effectively eliminates that tradeoff by packaging discovery and provisioning in one secure, automated workflow.
“Bringing together Alation’s metadata-driven discovery with Immuta’s dynamic policy enforcement means users can now find and access trusted data in one seamless workflow,” said Jake Magner, senior director of product management at Alation. “It is a significant step forward for data teams aiming to scale governed, AI-ready access across the enterprise.”
Talk about the whole integration on a slightly deeper, we begin from the promise of centralized inventory with consistent policy management. This translates to how Alation’s rich metadata catalog feeds directly into Immuta’s native policy engine for end-to-end control.
Next up, we have metadata-driven automation, which ensures that policies are applied dynamically based on metadata tags, without the need for manual tagging or intervention.
Another detail worth a mention is rooted in the prospect of self-service access provisioning. As a result, users can avail approved data access in minutes, thus removing the time to data delay along with various pain points.
Hold on, we still have a couple of bits left to unpack, considering we haven’t yet touched upon the potential for always-one auditing and monitoring. You see, every access decision is logged to full traceability and compliance.
Rounding up highlights would be the promise of AI-enabled access decisions. Immuta’s Review Assist AI essentially jumps into action here by giving governance teams AI-powered insights and recommendations to speed up and standardize data access approvals. The idea here is to cut through the noise and scale access review for both users and AI agents.
Among other things, we must reveal how this particular integration goes a distance to simplify the ways in which data teams manage governance and enable enterprises to confidently scale self-service access as they adopt data product and AI strategies.
“Data discovery is only half the battle. Access is where things break down for organizations,” said Matt Carroll, CEO and co-founder at Immuta. “This integration addresses that. By combining Immuta’s automated provisioning with Alation’s marketplace, we’re streamlining the entire process by eliminating the bureaucracy that slows data down. Too many people need to approve too many things. We make it simple and fast by using a combination of birthright access and request workflows, powered by AI, to automate most decisions and route the rest to the right person. And unlike others, we don’t just approve–we actually provision the data.”
