Anjana Data Platform 26.1: a new end-to-end data governance and AI experience
Simpler for the user. More powerful for the Government. More open to integration. Better prepared for AI. Easier to implement.
Data and AI governance should not become a new source of complexity.
It should help organisations to gain a better understanding of their assets, build trust, reduce risks, make better decisions and ensure that their Data Products, AI Products and Knowledge Products can be shared, used and activated in a secure, traceable and controlled manner.
But there is one essential condition for achieving this:
The Government must work for everyone.
For those who define the governance model. For those who produce and manage the assets. For those who need to identify and utilise them. For those who must approve, oversee and make decisions.
And, increasingly, this also applies to AI applications, assistants and agents that need access to business knowledge and context.
Government for Everyone – just as it should be.
This vision is the driving force behind Anjana Data Platform 26.1, one of the most significant improvements we have made to our platform.
A version in which we have not merely added new features.
We have drawn on all our experience to ensure that an increasingly powerful platform is also easier to implement, simpler to operate, more open to integration and better equipped to evolve alongside every organisation.
And we have done so whilst staying true to one central idea:
A government that creates value.
Because government only makes sense when it ceases to be yet another layer of paperwork and red tape and starts to improve the way the organisation operates.
When it builds trust.
When it reduces risk.
When it makes reuse easier.
When it speeds up access to high-quality assets.
When it turns policies and responsibilities into real decisions and actions.
ADP 26.1 represents a further step in that direction.
An experience designed to facilitate adoption
A government platform can only truly scale when it ceases to be a tool used exclusively by specialists.
That is why one of the main areas of focus in ADP 26.1 has been to reduce the friction faced by individuals, departments and teams required to participate in government.
That is what we mean by ADOPT.
The new Home serves as the entry point from which every user can quickly access what they need: searches, recent activity, requests, pending tasks, the workspace or the creation of new assets.
The experience is also tailored to each user profile through a much more granular permissions model, enabling each person to be presented with the capabilities, actions and context that are truly relevant to their role.
The aim is not to turn the entire organisation into experts in governance.
It is about ensuring that participating in government should be part of the natural way of working for every role.
A data owner, a data steward, a user, a business manager or an AI specialist do not all require the same level of expertise.
‘Government for All’ also means designing with that diversity in mind.
From the catalogue to the Knowledge Marketplace: governing to share and empower
Managing an asset should not be the end of the process.
It should make it easier for me to to be understood, shared and used with confidence.
For years, catalogues have enabled organisations to identify what data exists. But knowing that an asset exists does not mean having the necessary context to understand it, trust it, request it and use it under the appropriate conditions.
That is why Anjana has been moving away from the traditional catalogue concept for some time now, towards a Knowledge Marketplace.
A space where content can be published and shared Data Products, AI Products and Knowledge Products, together with the necessary context for their use: meaning, responsible parties, policies, agreements, terms of use and traceability.
ADP 26.1 represents a particularly significant step forward in this development.
The new Marketplace Portal It offers an experience specifically designed for those who need to discover and use products approved within the organisation.
Users can search, filter, view recommendations, save favourite searches, view relevant information, request access directly or add multiple products to a basket to manage requests together.
But what really sets it apart is not just the act of discovery.
It involves managing the entire consumption cycle:
DISCOVER → UNDERSTAND → REQUEST → AGREE → APPROVE → PROVIDE → USE → REVOKE → DOCUMENT
This specific feature of the Knowledge Marketplace embodies three key capabilities of the platform:
SHARE
Publish, discover and consume products produced under controlled conditions.
ACTIVATE
Translate government decisions into workflows, automations and actions within the systems where the assets are actually located.
ENABLE
To enable people and applications to use these products securely, efficiently and in the appropriate context.
The Knowledge Marketplace thus ceases to be merely a discovery experience and becomes a gateway to regulated consumption.
Stronger to govern and build trust
Many organisations already have governance policies, frameworks, committees and procedures in place.
The challenge arises when you have to ensure that all of this forms part of actual processes, decisions and operations.
We call this transition:
IMPLEMENT
The Government moves from being merely defined to becoming an integral part of the organisation’s day-to-day operations.
ADP 26.1 continues to strengthen this capability.
The new experience reorganises requests and validation tasks so that each user can easily identify what they have requested, which processes they have initiated and which decisions are pending.
The workflows provide more context for each request, including the reason for the request and new information to make it easier to track.
The permissions model is also evolving to offer much more granular control over which information and capabilities are available to each role.
And all of this also contributes to another key capability of the platform:
BUILDING TRUST
Trust does not arise simply because an asset is listed.
It is constructed using ownership, traceability, quality, compliance, risk, evidence, audit and accountability.
When an organisation is able to ascertain who made a decision, in what context, under which policy, what action was taken and what evidence was recorded, governance ceases to be merely a statement of intent.
It becomes real control.
ADP enables responsibilities, policies and controls to be translated into executable logic:
Context → Decision → Workflow → Action → Evidence
This same logic can be applied both to data governance and to the AI government, incorporating AI assets, responsibilities, risks, evidence and life cycles within a single operational governance model.
A platform that adapts to your organisation, not the other way round
No two organisations are the same.
Their structures, responsibilities, policies, processes, technologies, priorities and levels of maturity change.
That is why a government platform should not force them to adopt a predetermined model.
It must be the platform that is capable of:
ADAPT
ADP is designed to adapt to each organisation’s operational model, level of maturity, requirements and technological environment.
And this adaptability is achieved through four complementary technical enablers.
SET UP
Capabilities no-code/low-code allow you to configure the platform without turning every change into a development project.
Metamodels, templates, sections, attributes, vocabularies, relationships, workflows, roles, permissions, interfaces, validation rules and accelerators can be adapted to different models and use cases.
INTEGRATE
Anjana can connect bidirectionally with the business ecosystem via native plugins, REST/OpenAPI, identity protocols, events and Active Governance integrations.
EXTENDER
When a use case requires going beyond standard capabilities, SDKs, APIs, plugin development, custom models and other extensions allow you to add capabilities without modifying the core of the product.
AUTOMATE
BPMN workflows, notifications, scripts, API calls, events and orchestration mechanisms enable the execution of governance processes and repeatable actions.
CONFIGURE · INTEGRATE · EXPAND · AUTOMATE
These are not stages of maturity.
These are the mechanisms that enable Anjana adapts today and remains valid tomorrow.
A Sovereign Government that is Technologically Agnostic
Adapting to an organisation also means respecting both its technological architecture and its operational model of government.
Organisations have been investing for years in the cloud, lakehouses, data platforms, databases, BI, virtualisation, analytics and artificial intelligence.
Governance should not force them to replace that ecosystem or to adopt an organisational model that does not fit with their reality.
The Anjana Data Platform acts as a a cross-cutting, shared layer of governance and control across the organisation as a whole, independent of the technologies where assets are stored, processed or consumed.
This does not mean that the government has to be centralised.
The organisation can define and configure a governance model in Anjana centralised, decentralised, hybrid, federated or a combination of these, distributing responsibilities, decision-making and capabilities across domains, organisational units and teams in accordance with its own operational model.
What Anjana provides is a a common basis from which to ensure consistency, context, policies, responsibilities, traceability and cross-functional control, regardless of where decisions are implemented or who is responsible for each area.
ADP 26.1 continues to expand this capability through new integrations and the development of existing ones.
Integration with Databricks expands the possibilities for discovering and extracting metadata from Unity Catalog.
The capabilities of Power BI are evolving towards scenarios where government decisions and data-sharing agreements may be linked to the effective management of permits.
And the ecosystem continues to expand as integrations with technologies such as Snowflake, Denodo and other enterprise platforms.
Philosophy can best be summarised as follows:
A shared, cross-cutting government. Decentralised implementation where appropriate.
Anjana maintains the business context, responsibilities, policies, life cycles, decisions and evidence within a common governance framework.
Responsibilities may be allocated across domains and teams in accordance with the operational model defined by the organisation.
And specialist technologies can carry out checks in those areas where they are technically strongest.
The results and evidence can subsequently be returned to the government layer, whilst maintaining end-to-end traceability.
We do not seek to centralise the Government organisationally.
We are looking for to ensure it is coherent, cross-cutting and manageable at scale, regardless of how responsibility is distributed within the organisation and which technologies form part of its ecosystem.
A Trustworthy Business Environment: the foundation for understanding and enabling AI
AI needs data.
But to operate safely and effectively within an organisation, it needs much more than that.
You need to understand what assets are, how they relate to one another, who is responsible for them, how reliable they are, what policies apply to them, what risks exist and under what conditions they may be used.
It needs a business context.
At Anjana, we call this base:
A Trustworthy Business Environment
The controlled combination of metadata, semantics, relationships, ownership, quality, lineage, policies, risk, evidence and business meaning necessary to understand and use data and AI safely.
This foundation particularly embodies the ability to:
UNDERSTANDING
Linking technical metadata to business concepts, relationships, semantics, policies and business knowledge.
ADP 26.1 also opens up a new avenue for making that context accessible by incorporating the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
The first version of Anjana’s MCP server enables compatible assistants to begin interacting with capabilities and context managed by the platform.
This reinforces another key capability:
ENABLE
Allow people, applications and AI agents use data and AI that are managed securely, efficiently and with the appropriate context.
The opportunity does not simply lie in connecting an agent to more information.
It involves being able to interact with A Trustworthy Business Environment, whilst adhering to the same framework of permissions, workflows, responsibilities and auditing.
MCP is included in version 26.1 as a new feature that is still under development, and we do not currently recommend its use for critical production processes.
But the direction is clear:
AI needs context. Reliable context requires governance.
Easier to implement: it also makes adaptation and adoption easier
The experience of an enterprise platform does not begin when the user logs in.
It starts long before that.
Deploying, configuring, securing, updating and operating a platform also affects how easily an organisation can adopt it and start generating value.
That is why ADP 26.1 incorporates the new Anjana Installer.
The Installer provides both a graphical interface and a command-line interface for managing various activities throughout the installation lifecycle in IaaS, PaaS and on-premises environments.
It enables tasks such as the following to be tackled using a single approach:
- environment configuration;
- pre-deployment checks;
- installation;
- facility management;
- update;
- secure credential management;
- operation and maintenance.
Its ability to Preflight It enables aspects such as connectivity, permissions, resources, ports and packages to be validated prior to deployment, and facilitates the resolution of any issues detected.
The CLI also allows these capabilities to be integrated into automated processes and CI/CD pipelines.
All of this is particularly helpful in the early stages of the value creation process:
ADAPT → ADOPT
To reduce the effort required to implement the platform.
Reduce friction so you can start using it.
And shorten the path to starting to create value.
Because enterprise-ready It shouldn’t just mean having advanced features.
It should also mean being able to to deploy, update and operate the platform in an increasingly industrialised and controlled manner.
Simpler on the outside. More powerful on the inside.
Simplifying the experience does not mean reducing its capabilities.
It often means exactly the opposite.
To make the Government platform feel more intuitive for its users, it is necessary to incorporate greater sophistication into the platform.
ADP 26.1 incorporates a significant technical advancement in architecture and deployment.
The Kubernetes kit has been extensively restructured around Helm and improvements have been incorporated relating to TLS automation, secret management, environment-specific resource profiles and observability through OpenTelemetry, as well as developments in various internal components and services.
These are features that many users will never need to know about.
And that is precisely the aim.
Sophistication should lie in the platform, not in the user experience.
This philosophy ties in directly with our understanding of the product:
Governance by Design: Action-Oriented, Proactive and Preventive
The Government should not simply confine itself to recording what has already happened.
The context should help to determine what ought to happen.
Decisions must drive workflows, policies and actions.
And the results must be submitted to the Government as evidence.
A government platform should serve to to influence what happens next, not just to document the past.
Start with what you need today. Grow as you mature.
All this capability may raise a reasonable question:
Do I need to set all this up from the start?
No.
Every organisation has a different starting point.
Nor is there just one path to maturity.
The key is to have a platform that can adapt to the organisation’s current state, facilitate its adoption, progressively implement governance, and scale as new domains, users and use cases emerge.
This is our value creation journey:
ADAPT → ADOPT → IMPLEMENT → SCALE UP → CREATE VALUE
ADAPT
Configure the platform in line with the organisation’s model, requirements, maturity and architecture.
ADOPT
Ensure that the people, teams and departments that need to be involved are actually able to do so.
IMPLEMENT
To translate policies and responsibilities into processes, decisions and operations.
SCALAR
Extend the Government to new domains, users, use cases and levels of sophistication without replacing the platform.
CREATING VALUE
To help the Government achieve better operational results, greater trust, reusability, efficiency, risk reduction and a return on investment.
This does not mean that all organisations follow exactly the same steps at the same pace.
It means that Anjana can accompany them without demanding the highest level of sophistication from day one.
Start with what you need. Create value quickly. Scale up when you’re ready.
There is no single path. The Anjana Data Platform adapts to each organisation’s level of maturity and priorities.
The Data and AI Governance Platform that goes the extra mile
ADP 26.1 is much more than just a new interface or a collection of new features.
It represents another step in a much broader product history.
Government for Everyone – just as it should be.
A platform that adapts to real organisations, their people, operational models, architectures and levels of maturity.
A government that creates value.
A government that moves from policy to implementation and from paperwork to tangible results.
A platform that enables:
TO GOVERN responsibilities, policies, processes, controls and life cycles.
UNDERSTANDING Data, AI and knowledge through context, semantics, relationships and lineage.
BUILDING TRUST through quality, evidence, traceability, risk, compliance and accountability.
SHARE Data Products, AI Products and Knowledge Products subject to specific terms and conditions.
ACTIVATE decisions through workflows, automation and actions within the technology ecosystem.
ENABLE enable people, applications and agents to use data and AI within the appropriate context and with the right controls.
All of this is based on an architecture of A Sovereign Government that is Technologically Agnostic, built around a A Trustworthy Business Environment, and designed to remain Open and Ready for the Future by Design.
The platform that goes the extra mile.
Because governing shouldn’t mean adding yet another layer of complexity.
It should mean turning context, accountability and control into value for the organisation.
Discover the Anjana Data Platform 26.1 in action
Check out the ADP 26.1 Release Notes and all our documentation on the Anjana Data public wiki.
Or find out how to apply these capabilities to your organisation’s model, architecture and level of maturity.
Request a demo of the Anjana Data Platform
Start small. Deliver value quickly. Scale up when you’re ready.