Why Actian is Recognized as ‘Exemplary’ by ISG
Actian Corporation
December 4, 2025
“Actian performed best in Product Experience, notably in Platform, reflecting its strong technology administration, extensive security and privacy measures, and range of APIs. In Customer Experience, Actian showed capability in its strong product roadmap and sales and onboarding processes.” – ISG Research 2025 Data Products Buyers Guide
The newly released 2025 Data Products Buyers Guide from ISG Research names Actian as “Exemplary” and highlights the importance of data products. ISG’s analysis shows that Actian delivers a B++ overall performance, with especially strong results in Product Experience, which earned an A-.
This recognition underscores Actian’s role in helping organizations move from siloed data assets to a consistent, product-based approach with data contracts that accelerate AI and analytics while enabling all teams, both business and technical, with their data-related projects.
Why Data Products are Becoming Essential
The rise of AI agents and related use cases has accelerated efforts to democratize data. Organizations want to make data products accessible to business users and AI agents without requiring advanced skills or IT intervention.
This self-service only works when data is packaged, maintained, and governed with the same discipline as any other enterprise asset.
ISG defines data products as the outcome of data initiatives developed with product thinking and delivered as reusable assets that can be discovered and consumed on a self-service basis. The products include data contracts and feedback mechanisms to drive continuous quality improvement.
The research notes a clear trend. By 2027, more than three in five enterprises will adopt technologies to facilitate the delivery of data as a product as they shift to domain-based data ownership.
For organizations, the message is clear. Data products are moving from innovation projects to an essential enterprise strategy.
A Snapshot of Actian Data Products
In the Data Products Buyers Guide, Actian is classified as an “Exemplary” provider. ISG highlights several strengths that support this distinction:
- Product Experience. Actian performed best in Product Experience, particularly in the Platform category, reflecting strong technology administration, extensive security and privacy measures, and a broad range of APIs.
- Customer Experience. ISG notes Actian’s strong product roadmap and effective sales and onboarding processes, giving buyers confidence in both implementation and long-term direction.
Together, these results show that Actian offers a trusted data products solution with the Actian Data Intelligence Platform. The ISG software provider and product assessment show that the platform is built for operational resilience.
Why Product Experience Matters
The ISG Buyers Guide places heavy emphasis on the Product Experience, weighting it at 80%, with Capability and Platform each accounting for 40%. The research emphasizes that a platform must support a wide range of business and IT needs, such as adaptability, manageability, reliability, and usability, while maintaining secure and compliant operations.
In this context, Actian’s performance in Product Experience is especially important. For organizations adopting and using data products, the Actian platform:
- Provides intuitive data discovery, trust, and activation.
- Supports consistent governance, contracts, and lineage across domains.
- Enables users to discover and consume data products.
Actian’s strong platform scores for security, privacy, and API capabilities demonstrate that it can meet expectations in complex, hybrid environments.
Customer Experience: Confidence in Platform Adoption
The Buyers Guide evaluates Customer Experience, including the software provider’s commitment to customer success, the quality of sales and onboarding, the product roadmap, and the ability to demonstrate value and TCO/ROI.
Actian’s B++ performance in Customer Experience reflects:
- A credible roadmap for evolving data products, automation, and AI support.
- Strong sales and onboarding processes that help teams adopt the platform efficiently.
- Clear signals that organizations can align today’s investments with future requirements.
For platform buyers, this combination of product strength and customer validation is a crucial indicator of long-term fit and ability to deliver ongoing value.
How Actian Helps Organizations Operationalize Data Products
Actian Data Intelligence Platform is powered by a federated knowledge graph. It enables users to find, access, and govern data while benefiting from an easy-to-use data marketplace. This marketplace is where teams can discover, share, and leverage trusted data products.
The marketplace approach meets the needs of organizations that need a trusted data intelligence platform to:
- Support the full lifecycle of data product development, publication, and consumption.
- Create and version data products, tracking lineage, and maintaining consistent metadata.
- Use data contracts and classification schemas to standardize user expectations.
- Offer self-service for users to browse, discover, and request access to data products.
ISG notes that enterprises adopting data as a product can accelerate the delivery of analytics and AI initiatives, reduce duplication of effort, and enhance trust in the data used for strategic decision-making. Actian’s data products, contracts, catalog, and metadata capabilities are designed to make all of this not only possible, but easier.
Trusted Data Products Need Observability
Data products and data observability go hand-in-hand. Data contracts define expectations, while observability metrics track validity, timeliness, completeness, and other attributes that determine whether those expectations are met. Together, contracts and observability foster trust in data and clarify responsibilities between data producers and consumers.
The ISG 2025 Data Observability Buyers Guide reinforces this point. In that report, Actian is also classified as Exemplary, with a B++ overall performance and strong scores in both Product Experience and Customer Experience.
ISG highlights Actian Data Observability for:
- Smooth sales and onboarding experience.
- Strong privacy and security capabilities.
The research notes that more than two-thirds of enterprises will invest in data observability tools by 2027. The goal is to improve trust in data through better detection, resolution, and prevention of quality issues. For organizations building data products, data observability is foundational for ensuring data products remain accurate, reliable, and AI-ready.
Key Buying Considerations for Enterprises
ISG designed its Buyer’s Guides to provide a balanced, research-based framework that helps enterprises evaluate software providers beyond feature checklists.
For data products, organizations should:
- Assess cultural readiness and domain ownership, not just technology.
- Evaluate platform adaptability, manageability, reliability, and usability.
- Look for a clear roadmap, transparency, and strong customer references.
- Ensure the platform offers governance, cataloging, and observability capabilities.
Actian’s performance in both the Data Products and Data Observability Buyers Guides highlights our platform’s ability to support organizations that want to treat data as a product and maintain a trusted, AI-ready data foundation.
To see how Actian compares with other providers and to understand which capabilities matter most as organizations scale data products and AI, download the full Data Products Buyers Guide.
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