At MANTA, we know that data is chief among any enterprise-level organization’s most valuable assets. That’s why we invested nearly two years into a partnership with IBM that unleashes the maximum value of an organization’s data. Together, we’ve officially launched MANTA Automated Data Lineage for IBM Cloud Pak for Data, which provides businesses with historical, indirect, and technical data lineage capabilities. 

Partnerships like ours are stellar examples of what happens when two companies come together to break new ground. Ernie Ostic, SVP of Products at MANTA, and Priya Krishnan, Director of Product Management, Data & AI, at IBM, were instrumental in bringing this new collaboration to life. Hear their thoughts on the significance of this integration and why it allows customers to harness the power of their data.

Let’s start with a bit of history. Tell us how the partnership between MANTA and IBM began. 

Ernie: Informally, MANTA and IBM have had a partnership for about five years, dating back to when IBM was continuing to expand in the data governance space – specifically with its Information Governance Catalog (IGC). Close to a decade ago, IBM published an API that allowed other vendors to push information and added value technologies, like data lineage, to the overall catalog. 

Very early on, MANTA embraced IBM’s strategy. We used that published API to put MANTA’s data lineage into IGC. We also established close relationships with the sales, consulting, and engineering teams at IBM. Those relationships served as the catalyst for the Watson Knowledge Catalog (WKC) product engineering teams to connect with MANTA to learn more. At that point, we both saw data lineage as a complement to WKC, and an opportunity for us to create greater value together.

Priya: Modernizing our data governance offering from IGC to WKC was a critical piece of our partnership. Due to earlier successes with MANTA and the way your company automates data lineage, we knew – as the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) – that we wanted to bring MANTA into the fold with us. With this new partnership and the official launch of MANTA Automated Data Lineage for IBM Cloud Pak for Data, we can offer our customers one integrated solution.

What is the significance of integrating MANTA’s data lineage software into the IBM Cloud Pak for Data platform? 

Priya: One of the building blocks of data fabric and a foundational element of our strategy is ensuring that users have reliable access to governance trusted data. And a key feature to recognizing a fully governed platform is the ability to have full lineage. What sets MANTA’s data lineage apart – and why it’s so complementary to IBM Cloud Pak for Data – is the automated and deep lineage capabilities across multiple sources and applications.

When we think about going to market with MANTA, we think about three key use cases: 

• The first is compliance with industry regulations. This is especially important because, with lineage and governance together, we provide a complete solution. 
• The second is the ability to understand the impact of how upstream data changes can affect downstream applications and do root cause analysis. 
• The third use case is to modernize applications. Understanding which legacy assets are available and prioritizing which workloads to modernize first helps to optimize costs and time.

The complementary nature of both technologies working together provides a winning solution for us to offer a modernized data governance and privacy framework. 

Ernie: I’ve long been a believer that successful data governance begins and ends with a thorough grasp of what your data means, what it represents, as well as having a solid stewardship model. Think of it as a three-legged stool. One leg is an understanding of agreed-upon definitions – say, for a financial institution, it’s a shared definition of risks and exposures. The second leg is data quality, which gives users a comfort level that data is good and is refreshed. And the third leg is data lineage itself. If you lose one leg, the stool simply can’t stand. 

That’s a great analogy. Tell us how the integration of data lineage into IBM Cloud Pak for Data allows customers to optimize the power of their data.

Ernie: With this integration, we’ve made a seamless user experience possible. Rather than connecting two different technologies, customers have the benefit of a singular interface. Bringing such a coordinated effort to life meant that our two parties had to be in lockstep throughout the process and ensure that all of the APIs complied. 

At MANTA, we were looking to do containerization and get ready for the Cloud. For this integration to happen, we needed to meet IBM’s guidelines, ensuring that we were OpenShift ready and Cloud Pak for Data ready. We already knew that Cloud Pak is highly coordinated and makes the rest of the environment work. So, in order for us to offer easy, plug and play installation – and drive value for the customer by reducing the total cost of ownership – everything had to cooperate on a technology level. 

Priya: End-to-end, seamless integration is at the heart of our partnership. It’s what drives commercial benefit. Furthermore, the entire support cycle is integrated and built on IBM’s layers of security checks and balances. From the customer perspective, all they see is one product. Cloud Pak for Data takes MANTA’s automated lineage and converts it into a business-ready user interface – one where multiple users can interact on the same platform and look at their lineage to obtain benefit. 

In closing, are there any additional benefits to enterprise customers? 

Priya: Our goal is always to support our customers. And with this integration, we’re doing just that. If you were to build this solution yourself, you’d have to pull multiple pieces and stitch them together. Having one integrated platform benefits users by saving them time, money, and other resources. 

Ernie: In addition to greater value, there’s an added layer of comfort. The IBM customer has the assurance that they are getting a truly embedded solution. Our engineers are communicating every day and working out the nuances of the product. From a procurement perspective alone, it lets customers know that we’ve handled the integration of two software solutions for them.

And finally, it’s about commitment. Now that we’re in the go-to-market phase, both MANTA and IBM are investing heavily in enablement. We want our teams on both sides to fully understand this integration – whether that’s during a selling scenario, a customer support scenario, or both. Together, we’re making sure that we’re thoroughly training our teams, so that we ultimately help our customers recognize the full value of this integration and enable data-driven success.