Shedding Light on Dark Data With Actian Data Intelligence

In a world where data is the new oil, most enterprises still operate in the dark—literally. Estimates suggest that up to 80% of enterprise data remains “dark”: unused, unknown, or invisible to teams that need it most. Dark Data is the untapped information collected through routine business activities but left unanalyzed—think unused log files, untagged cloud storage, redundant CRM fields, or siloed operational records.

Understanding and managing this type of data isn’t just a matter of hygiene—it’s a competitive imperative. Dark Data obscures insights, introduces compliance risk, and inflates storage costs. Worse, it erodes trust in enterprise data, making transformation efforts slower and costlier.

That’s where the Actian Data Intelligence Platform stands apart. While many solutions focus narrowly on metadata governance or data quality alone, Actian’s integrated approach is engineered to help you surface, understand, and operationalize your hidden data assets with precision and speed.

What Makes Dark Data so Difficult to Find?

Traditional data catalogs offer discovery—but only for data already known or documented. Data observability tools track quality—but typically only for data actively moving through pipelines. This leaves a blind spot: static, historical, or misclassified data, often untouched by either tool.

That’s the problem with relying on siloed solutions offered by other vendors. These platforms may excel at metadata management but often lack deep integration with real-time anomaly detection, making them blind to decaying or rogue data sources. Similarly, standalone observability tools identify schema drifts and freshness issues but don’t reveal the context or lineage needed to re-integrate that data.

The Actian Advantage: Unified Catalog + Observability

Actian Data Intelligence Platform closes this gap. By combining metadata management and data observability, the  platform, when combined with Actian Data Observability, offers a dual-lens approach:

• Discover Beyond the Known: Actian goes beyond surface-level metadata, crawling and indexing both structured and semi-structured data assets—regardless of their popularity or usage frequency.
• Assess Quality in Real-Time: Actian ensures that every discovered asset isn’t just visible—it’s trustworthy. AI/ML-driven anomaly detection, schema change alerts, and data drift analysis provide full transparency.
• Drive Business Context: The Actian Data Intelligence Platform connects data to business terms, ownership, and lineage—empowering informed decisions about what to govern, retire, or monetize.

Compared to the Market: Why Actian is Different

Most platforms only solve part of the Dark Data challenge. Here are five ways the Actian Data Intelligence Platform stands apart:

Comprehensive Metadata Discovery:

• Other Solutions: Offer strong metadata capture, but often require heavy configuration and manual onboarding. They might also focus purely on observability, with no discovery of new or undocumented assets.
• Actian: Automatically scans and catalogs all known and previously hidden assets—structured or semi-structured—without relying on prior documentation.

Real-Time Data Quality Monitoring:

• Other Solutions: Little to no active data quality assessment or reliance on external tools. They provide robust data quality and anomaly detection, but without metadata context.
• Actian: Integrates observability directly into the platform—flagging anomalies, schema drifts, and trust issues as they happen.

Dark Data Discovery:

• Other Solutions: May uncover some dark data through manual exploration or lineage tracking, but lack automation. Or, they may not address dark or dormant data at all.
• Actian: Actively surfaces hidden, forgotten, or misclassified data assets—automatically and with rich context.

Unified and Integrated Platform:

• Other Solutions: Often a patchwork of modular tools or loosely integrated partners.
• Actian: Offers a cohesive, natively integrated platform combining cataloging and observability in one seamless experience.

Rich Business Context and Lineage:

• Other Solutions: Provide lineage and business glossaries, but often complex for end-users to adopt.
• Actian: Automatically maps data to business terms, ownership, and downstream usage—empowering both technical and business users.

Lighting the Path Forward

Dark Data is more than a nuisance—it’s a barrier to agility, trust, and innovation. As enterprises strive for data-driven cultures, tools that only address part of the problem are no longer enough.

Actian Data Intelligence Platform, containing both metadata management and data observability, provides a compelling and complete solution to discover, assess, and activate data across your environment—even the data you didn’t know you had. Don’t just manage your data—illuminate it.

Find out more about Actian’s data observability capabilities.

About Phil Ostroff

Phil Ostroff is Director of Competitive Intelligence at Actian, leveraging 30+ years of experience across automotive, healthcare, IT security, and more. Phil identifies market gaps to ensure Actian's data solutions meet real-world business demands, even in niche scenarios. He has led cross-industry initiatives that streamlined data strategies for diverse enterprises. Phil's Actian blog contributions offer insights into competitive trends, customer pain points, and product roadmaps. Check out his articles to stay informed on market dynamics.