CRN Exclusive: Data Management Startup Immuta Debuts Inaugural Partner Program

Data management software developer Immuta is launching its first channel program, seeking partners to help the startup expand beyond its early adopter enterprise customers to reach a broader range of prospective customers.

Immuta, based in College Park, Md., is kicking off the global Immuta Partner Program with the aim of recruiting reseller, professional services, IT infrastructure and technology partners who can work with the company's data management platform for data science applications.

"Our intention is to be a 100 percent channel company," said Chief Customer Officer Andrew Gilman, who is heading up the company's channel efforts, in an interview with CRN.

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Businesses and organizations are trying to leverage their ever-growing stores of data for a range of business analytics and machine-learning applications, many tied into digital transformation and customer engagement projects.

"There's a need to operationalize data and develop algorithms to act on it. That's where we see the big opportunity," Gilman said. "The missing link is how do you get from the raw data to the machine-learning models?"

The disconnect between raw data storage systems and data science/business analytics systems is also hindering data governance and compliance efforts such as HIPAA and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

The Immuta system resides between stored data, including data in Hadoop systems and relational databases, and the data science and machine-learning algorithms that utilize that data.

Immuta provides data science, business analytics, artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms with a view of the stored data without physically moving or copying it. The system uses a "Data Control Plane" to connect the data and create a virtual data catalog for analysts and data scientists.

The Immuta software also helps data governance and compliance managers write condition-based policies that govern how the data can be accessed and used.

Immuta debuted the 2.0 edition of its software in September and said that customer revenue grew 260 percent in 2017, without disclosing actual numbers. The startup received $8 million in Series A funding in February 2017.

To date, Immuta has largely worked directly with a number of Global 1000-class companies, many in financial services, health care and government, which have implemented the vendor's platform.

The company is now looking to expand to more potential customers, including midsize companies, and that's led to the development and launch of the Immuta Partner Program.

Gilman noted that many of Immuta's executives and founders, including CEO Matthew Carroll, CTO Steve Touw and Chief Architect Mike Schiller, previously worked at CSC and so have channel experience. "Partnering has been in the blood of this organization from the beginning," he said.

Immuta has already engaged with a handful of channel partners in three categories: resellers and service providers, IT infrastructure providers, and technology partners. As part of its channel program launch, the company unveiled partnerships with data analytics service providers Klarrio and Anexinet and data security service provider Xpertex.

Anexinet offers expertise and services in cloud and hybrid IT, business analytics, digital transformation and customer engagement. The Blue Bell, Pa.-based company began working with Immuta's software fairly recently, using the system to manage unstructured "omni-channel" data from call centers and CRM systems.

"We see it as a very nice fit for our customers," said Al Sporer, Anexinet general manager and executive vice president, in an interview with CRN. The company uses Immuta's software both as a tool for providing data services for customers and as a foundation on which to develop data management solutions, he said.

Immuta also already has technology partnerships with several machine-learning companies, including DataRobot and Dataiku.

Through the partner program Immuta will provide partners with training and technical services for building solutions and delivering services around the Immuta platform. "We're really looking for partners to do the majority of the delivery work," Gilman said.

The company will also provide assistance for partners to build centers of excellence to demonstrate applications and use cases for the Immuta technology. And the program will offer opportunity registration, market development funds and participation in marketing events.

Sporer is looking forward to participating in more joint marketing customer events with Immuta and sees the vendor's system becoming a key technology in Anexinet's hybrid cloud migration practice.

Immuta will recruit a limited number of partners in the U.S. and Europe, according to Gilman, as well as partners with expertise in specific verticals including financial services, health care, life sciences, and state and local government.