Actian Recognized as ‘Exemplary’ for Data Intelligence

“Actian performed best in Product Experience with an A- grade, notably receiving an A in Manageability due to breadth and depth of capability for technology administration.”

–ISG 2025 Data Intelligence Buyers Guide

The newly released ISG 2025 Data Intelligence Buyers Guide names Actian as “Exemplary” and designates us as a “Leader” in multiple categories.

In addition to recognition in the Data Intelligence Buyers Guide, Actian was also named Exemplary in the newly released ISG 2025 Data Governance Buyers Guide. ISG awarded Actian an A- overall and named us a Leader in Manageability, underscoring our platform’s technology administration, privacy, and security. Download the Data Governance Buyers Guide here.

Together, these results emphasize Actian’s ability to deliver governance by design, embedding compliance, stewardship, and oversight directly into the platform, while enabling flexibility and scalability.

This recognition highlights Actian’s ability to balance intuitive technical functionality with flexible data governance and management. These are key considerations for executives, buyers, and decision-makers evaluating enterprise data intelligence platforms.

Actian Data Intelligence Platform Performance Snapshot

ISG’s evaluation shows that Actian has built an innovative data intelligence platform that scales across technical requirements while delivering credible validation from customers. Scalability and customer validation are important indicators of long-term stability and direction.

Why Product Experience is Critical

ISG weighted Product Experience at 80% of its overall evaluation, underscoring the importance of usability, capability, reliability, adaptability, and manageability in daily operations.

Actian’s platform stands out in several ways:

• ISG highlights Actian’s breadth and depth of technology administrative capabilities. Enterprises can expect efficient configuration, governance, and monitoring, minimizing overhead while strengthening reliability and compliance.
• Actian is named a Leader for its coverage across metadata management, data lineage, data quality profiling, and data discovery, ensuring support for both operational and analytical needs.
• Balanced strengths. Actian’s profile reflects a well-rounded solution designed to meet user requirements.

For executives and technology buyers, this shows that Actian aligns with enterprise-scale expectations while remaining accessible and efficient to use.

Customer Experience: Validation and Roadmap

Customer Experience accounted for 20% of ISG’s evaluation. Actian earned strong marks in this area for:

• Roadmap confidence. ISG cites Actian’s credible product roadmap, giving buyers assurance that today’s investment will align with future requirements.
• Case studies and references. Documented customer experiences strengthen adoption decisions by showcasing measurable, real-world outcomes.

Taken together, these results demonstrate that Actian not only delivers technologically, but also provides a clear vision of how the platform will evolve.

Knowledge Graph and Data Catalog Capabilities

Modern data intelligence depends on knowledge graphs and data catalogs to connect disparate data, provide context, and build trust. ISG highlights the growing importance of these features across the marketplace.

Through 2027, data catalog providers will evolve their products to support data intelligence by prioritizing the delivery of knowledge graph and data product platform capabilities, as well as the use of AI, according to ISG.

Actian integrates a knowledge graph and catalog:

• Knowledge graph. Actian’s knowledge graph maps relationships among data assets, pipelines, reports, and business processes. This helps organizations understand dependencies, uncover hidden connections, and accelerate discovery. By surfacing these relationships, enterprises gain better visibility into how data moves across their ecosystem and how it underpins analytics and AI initiatives.
• Data catalog. With data catalog functionality layered over technical and business metadata, Actian ensures both IT professionals and business analysts can search, interpret, and trust the data they find. Natural-language discovery, semantic enrichment, and governance controls make data more accessible without compromising oversight.

Together, these capabilities act as the “connective tissue” between data production and consumption, supporting self-service data access while upholding governance and compliance.

Key Strengths and Capabilities

ISG forecasts that by 2027, more than three in five enterprises will adopt technologies to support the delivery of data as a product.

Actian is well positioned here. Our data contracts provide a governed framework for creating and sharing trusted, ready-to-use data products across the enterprise. Combined with our data observability and catalog features, this ensures data products are reliable, traceable, and AI-ready.

Additional strengths of the Actian Data Intelligence Platform include:

• Exemplary classification. Actian ranks among the top-tier providers evaluated by ISG.
• Manageability leadership. Simplifies complexity for IT and business users with intuitive administrative controls.
• Capability depth. Comprehensive functionality across discovery, lineage, quality, and governance.
• Knowledge graph and data catalog. Advanced capabilities to connect, contextualize, and democratize data.

Strategic Considerations for Buyers

For organizations selecting a data intelligence platform, ISG advises weighing both Product Experience and Customer Experience against enterprise priorities.

Actian is particularly well suited for organizations that value:

• Operational efficiency. Strong manageability reduces administrative and compliance burdens.
• Governance and compliance. High capability scores demonstrate strengths in metadata, lineage, and quality management.
• Roadmap confidence. Validation and customer references provide assurance of continued relevance.
• Enhanced visibility. Knowledge graph and catalog functionality deliver transparency and accessibility across domains.

Key Takeaways When Buying a Data Intelligence Platform

Actian has consistently earned recognition across multiple ISG market reports, including the Buyers Guide for Data Intelligence 2024, Buyers Guide for Data Platforms, and Buyers Guide for Data Products.

The 2025 ISG Data Intelligence Buyers Guide underscores Actian’s position as an Exemplary provider. We are noted as a Leader in Product Experience, Manageability, and Capability, and have strong validation from customers and references.

Executives, buyers, and decision-makers can explore Actian’s full performance in the latest ISG Data Intelligence Buyers Guide to see how we compare across evaluated providers. Get a copy of the report.

About Actian Corporation

Actian empowers enterprises to confidently manage and govern data at scale, streamlining complex data environments and accelerating the delivery of AI-ready data. The Actian data intelligence approach combines data discovery, metadata management, and federated governance to enable smarter data usage and enhance compliance. With intuitive self-service capabilities, business and technical users can find, understand, and trust data assets across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. Actian delivers flexible data management solutions to 42 million users at Fortune 100 companies and other enterprises worldwide, while maintaining a 95% customer satisfaction score.