Forrester’s new Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study provides a detailed financial model based on interviews with six Immuta customers in order to assess the ROI of the Immuta Data Security Platform.
The study concludes that Immuta can provide benefits totaling $6.08M, an ROI of 175% over three years, and a payback period of less than 6 months.
We commissioned the study knowing that the benefits of data security are hard to quantify. Just how much does improved compliance matter in terms of hard dollars? What is the business impact of reducing the number of data policies required?
We think Forrester’s model captures both the hard numbers and unquantified benefits our customers experience. And, the model in this study is one that you can adapt to your own particular use case when evaluating Immuta.
Let’s dive in.
Report Methodology
Forrester conducted in-depth interviews with six Immuta customers that have been in production with the platform for more than six months. Based on the interviews, Forrester constructed a Total Economic Impact™ framework to identify the cost, benefit, flexibility, and risk factors that were part of the organizations’ investment decisions. Forrester then created a composite organization, and used the framework to estimate the benefits and costs over a three year period.
The Hard Numbers
The study found that the Immuta Data Security Platform provides quantifiable benefits totaling $6.08M over a three year period. That total benefit comes from three areas: Operational efficiencies, faster data access, and increased revenue.
Operational Efficiencies
Forrester found that Immuta’s automated approach can reduce the resources organizations must dedicate to data access and policy management by 70%. In the study, this amounted to cost savings of $1.6M over three years.
We have managed to save two FTEs from our operations team simply by managing to automate the data product access.”
Head of Data Management Platforms at a Life Sciences Organization
Faster Data Access
The study concluded that faster data access makes employees more productive. Forrester noted that customers “were able to expedite the time to data at key data access events” and for their model they used the specific example of giving new employees access to data two weeks faster and provisioning new views one week faster. Faster access to data led to $1.2M in savings using their model.
The creation of a new view used to take a month. In Immuta, if the table exists in the cluster, exposing it is less than a day’s worth of effort. The life cycle goes from 30 days to a day.”
Head of Statistical Modeling And Development at a Financial Services Organization
Increased Revenue
Forrester found that improved risk management could increase innovation with new data products and ultimately deliver $3.3M in added revenue. This would be the result of 5%-15% increases in client contract values when monetizing new data products.
Immuta improves business outputs from more data access and use case applications by 2x for our organization.”
Head of Data Lake Engineering at a Financial Services Organization
Additional Benefits
Beyond the hard numbers, Forrester also noted additional unquantifiable benefits. Although they are not included in the total ROI, these benefits are significant.
Improved Compliance and Security Posture
The study did not attempt to quantify the reduction in risks from a cybersecurity and compliance perspective, but did indicate what such savings might be. The study notes that savings would come from Immuta helping avoid fines related to regulatory compliance and also efficiencies in responding to incidents.
For example, if an organization leaks 1M records and could be fined $5M for that breach, and Immuta removes or reduces that risk, that’s a potential $5M cost avoidance that could be factored into a model. That is an entire discipline beyond the scope of the study, but if it were included it could massively increase the ROI of Immuta.
We’re [implementing Immuta] to avoid data leakage. It also demonstrates that we are meeting compliance standards, which can help us avoid fines.”
Head of Data Management Platforms at a Life Sciences Organization
In regards to efficiencies in responding to security incidents, one customer noted:
During an incident that impacts 50M customers globally, personal data exposure is possible. Immuta helps us know that the data is classified correctly, understand the cost to business, and then assist in meeting the reporting responsibilities across our global operations, as specific countries have different requirements, different data attributes, and such.”
Global Lead of Security GRC and Privacy at a Digital Currency Exchange
Enhanced Employee Satisfaction
No one likes waiting for IT tickets to be resolved, and it’s no different with “data access tickets.” For data engineering teams, security and privacy teams, and the hundreds of data analysts that most enterprises have, getting access to data so they can do their jobs leads to upticks in both efficiency and job satisfaction.
Now I think we are at a place where we can turn around data access so fast people actually have forgotten the pain it used to be.”
Head of Statistical Modeling and Development at a Financial Services Organization
Better Customer Experiences
Forrester found that the ability to democratize data and scale access across the organization led to increased innovation, including the ability to launch new data products that improve customer experiences.
For example, a grocery delivery company uses Immuta to serve up real-time suggestions for other items a user could purchase, and match them to real-time inventory. On the back end, this function is based on the ability to build new custom views on the fly using purchase data and the store’s inventory. Overall, delivering a better in-app experience drives revenue.
Not all use cases for Immuta are purely security-based. Sometimes, data teams just need simpler and more elegant ways to use and share data that weren’t possible before.
Final Thoughts
Regardless of where you are in your cloud journey, there’s one common theme – everyone can benefit from a Data Security Platform to secure and accelerate data usage. After all, more data usage is what organizations need in order to innovate. As one customer put it in the study:
With Immuta, it’s safer to share more data, as it’s more compliant. Immuta also provides full visibility into data access, and overall accelerates the numbers of use cases we can deliver on.”
Head of Data Lake Engineering at a Financial Services
To read additional customer stories and get a breakdown of Immuta’s cost, download and read the entire Forrester Total Economic Impact™ of Immuta here.
If you are interested in learning more about Immuta, request a demo of the product here.
