February 2, 2023 How to Protect Your Cloud Data Platform The Cost of a Data Breach Report 2022, conducted by Ponemon Institute, found that data security breaches now cost companies $4.34 million per incident on average – the highest cost in the 18-year history of the report. Forty-five percent of all breaches were cloud-based. This percentage is likely to increase, given that 43% of… Read More
December 22, 2022 Advantages of Implementing a Cloud Data Platform A current data explosion is being fueled by cheaper data storage and advanced analytics technologies. However, a difficult task still remains: how do we aggregate that data into a single place where you can easily analyze it? Teams struggle to access accurate, consistent data from the multiple analytics and extract, transform, load process (ETL)… Read More
December 5, 2022 Should I Move My On-Premises Data Warehouse to a Modern Cloud Data Platform? Do you still have an on-premises data warehouse? If so, are you evaluating whether you should move it to a cloud data platform? There are two main things to consider when making this decision: the advantages of the cloud versus on-premises deployment and the advantages of a modern cloud data platform versus an on-premises… Read More
November 11, 2022 Customer Experience (CX) Challenges for Small Businesses Customer experience (CX) is top-of-mind for business leaders who are weighing how to best make decisions that encourage customer loyalty and engagement. There has been a strong push across all industries to improve the quality of experience customers have, which in turn, drives revenue growth. Successful deployment of CX initiatives comes with challenges, however.… Read More
November 4, 2022 How Can the Avalanche Cloud Data Platform Help Me Deliver Real-time Data Analytics? Organizations need to put relevant, trustworthy, and actionable data directly into the hands of their front-line workers and decision makers, in a manner that improves situational awareness, as change is happening. This empowers users to decide on the best courses of action in the moment. Here’s how you can use our Avalanche Cloud Data… Read More
October 19, 2022 Personalization’s Role is Key to Success in the Customer Experience (CX) Game A recent McKinsey study found that over 70% of consumers expect a personalized interaction with the brands they engage with, and 76% have said they’re frustrated when this doesn’t take place. This represents a razor-thin edge for businesses, who can risk losing those frustrated customers to direct competitors, if their personalization efforts aren’t met.… Read More
October 6, 2022 Why It’s Essential to Embrace Hybrid Data If you package and ship data like cartons of sugar – standard sized, easily stacked, and easily pulled from the shelf – it would be simpler to manage. Unfortunately, it’s not. Because organizations store data in so many different forms and places, extracting the sweet, fine grains of insight from hybrid data is a… Read More
September 30, 2022 Educating and Empowering Customers: Actian’s Tools for Success Whether you are a long-term user, new to Actian’s products and just learning the systems, or somewhere in-between, we are here to help you achieve your goals. At Actian, we are committed to partnering with our customers to offer them the best possible learning and user experience. We place a strong emphasis on serving… Read More
September 28, 2022 Connecting Data to Make Customer Experience (CX) Easier Effective business decision-making relies on Getting CX right can be tricky given that the necessary data is often difficult to access across silos or exists in disparate and hard-to-reach places. A holistic understanding of a customer not only helps businesses know who they are selling to, but it also helps them craft a customer… Read More
September 20, 2022 Prioritizing a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy to Drive Business Growth It’s no longer a question if business leaders must understand their customers and be able to identify where they are navigating in their technology journey. Creating a solid CX is not a luxury, but an essential practice for ambitious businesses that want to connect with their customers in meaningful ways - and this starts… Read More
September 15, 2022 The Value of a 360-Degree Customer View Embracing changes in customer demands is an essential quality of a forward-thinking enterprise. Customer demands are always evolving, and the past few years have turned consumer behavior on its head, making agility the biggest competitive differentiator. So how are companies supposed to keep up with customer preferences? Determining what behavior will become long-term shifts… Read More
September 6, 2022 Scalability is All About Getting a Smart Start Scalability is for the most part, a peek into the future. That’s why organizations often bring it up when discussing growth and expansion opportunities - whether it’s scaling up operations to keep pace with increased customer demand or adapting to a new industry-disrupting technology. Scalability is particularly important to business leaders right now, as… Read More
September 1, 2022 Power Up the Enterprise with Data – ‘Gas’ for your SaaS The faster an organization can innovate and scale its technology to adapt to changing market conditions and economic uncertainty, the better-positioned it will be as a market leader. Data insights fuel organizations but adding that “gas” to your organization’s SaaS is easier said than done. Be it analyzing customer data, running and maintaining a… Read More
July 27, 2022 Breaking Down Data Silos Fuels Faster Innovation When business teams talk about “silos,” they’re usually referring to organizational constructs, bemoaning the presence of business teams that keep to themselves. Siloed teams can unintentionally (or intentionally) hoard information and business insights like precious grain in tall farm towers, not feeding the rest of the company. And sometimes in extreme cases, outside stakeholders… Read More
July 5, 2022 The Benefits of Cloud Compared to On-Premises Starting at the turn of the century, there has been a steady move to the cloud across industries. It started slowly at first but has evolved into a paradigm shift for many businesses. Security conscious players – bricks-and-mortar financial institutions, healthcare providers, retailers and utilities – have been slower than others in adopting the… Read More
June 13, 2022 Why a DBA Will Find Going to the Cloud to Their Advantage The cloud is everywhere. Steady pre-pandemic growth transitioned into massive uptake over the last two years, and according to research firm Gartner the market shows no signs of slowing—by the end of 2022, spending on public cloud services is set to reach almost $500 billion worldwide. The challenge? Not all IT professionals are convinced… Read More
November 8, 2021 Will Cloud Data Warehouses Really Help You Cut Costs? If the first question you consider when thinking about a cloud data warehouse involves how much money you will save by moving your on-premises solution to the cloud, you may not like my answer: There’s no guarantee that you will realize any cost savings at all. But let me suggest, however humbly, that this… Read More
August 15, 2021 Semi-Structured Data: What It Is and Why It Matters Semi-structured data is emerging as a critical element of business operations and strategies. Typically, business leaders make decisions based on analysis of data stored in forms, spreadsheets, and relational databases – in other words, structured data. However, in a modern business environment, constraining data with forms and tables is no longer sufficient. What is… Read More
June 17, 2021 Hybrid Data Conference Recap and Highlights That's a Wrap! Wow! What a wonderful time we had at the 2021 Hybrid Data Conference! Over the course of two days, we showcased amazing demos, customer stories and technology advancements across the Actian portfolio. For those in attendance, we hope you enjoyed the event and opportunity to see a few of the ways… Read More
May 6, 2021 Avalanche on Google Cloud Delivers High-Speed and Pay-Only-for-What-You-Need The Actian Avalanche Hybrid Cloud Data Warehouse, with the fastest columnar analytics engine available in the market today, is now generally available on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) via Google Cloud and the Google Marketplace. For organizations that need the flexibility to scale dynamically yet pay only for the resources they need, that want an… Read More
April 27, 2021 Actian Avalanche on Google Cloud: Engineered for the Data-Driven Enterprise Today, Actian is excited to announce the delivery of Actian Avalanche hybrid cloud data platform on Google Cloud Marketplace. Avalanche is initially available in the us-east1 region, which will be expanded to include US West, German, and Irish cloud regions in the coming months. If you are interested in trying out Avalanche on Google Cloud,… Read More
March 25, 2021 What is the Difference Between a Data Analytics Hub and a Lakehouse? In the opening installment of this blog series—Data Lakes, Data Warehouses and Data Hubs: Do we need another choice? I explore why simply migrating these on-prem data integration, management, and analytics platforms to the Cloud does not fully address modern data analytics needs. In comparing these three platforms, it becomes clear that all of… Read More
February 25, 2021 What is a Data Analytics Hub? And why is it better than a Data Lake or an Analytics Hub? In the opening installment of this blog series—Data Lakes, Data Warehouses and Data Hubs: Do we need another choice? I explore why simply migrating these on-prem data integration, management, and analytics platforms to the Cloud does not fully address modern data… Read More
January 29, 2021 The Best Cloud Data Strategy for Value Which cloud makes sense? Nothing is perfect, but we want to approach perfection with continuous improvement and the management of risk in our business environments. IT capabilities and resources underpin our business environments. On-premise capabilities and cloud capabilities have to deliver a return on investment (ROI) for our efforts and, at the same time,… Read More
December 16, 2020 The Need for Speed in Data Analysis Why Performance Matters My very first sales call to an analytics prospect was with a customer using an OLTP database for reporting. Some of their reports took hours to run and one particularly challenging report typically ran for more than thirteen hours. Our performance benchmarking had shown that for analytics workloads, Actian would be… Read More
October 28, 2020 Eight Reasons Why Avalanche is 8X Faster Than Snowflake This month, GigaOm published a comprehensive evaluation of leading cloud data warehouse services based on performance and cost. Offerings analyzed included Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, Microsoft Azure Synapse, Google BigQuery, and our very own Actian Avalanche. There are many intriguing results included in the report, but an indisputable conclusion was reached by GigaOm: "In a… Read More
October 27, 2020 Why The AA, a Leading UK Insurer, Selected Actian Avalanche for High-Performance Cloud Analytics We are very excited to share the news that The Automobile Association (AA), the UK's largest motoring organization, selected Actian Avalanche hybrid cloud warehouse for its insurance business to execute its cloud migration strategy. The AA is a leading UK automobile insurer and breakdown service provider that provides vehicle insurance, driving lessons, breakdown coverage,… Read More
September 21, 2020 Five Benefits of the Hybrid Cloud Approach The ISO 17788 Cloud Computing Overview and Vocabulary standard defines a hybrid cloud as “a cloud deployment model using at least two different cloud deployment models.” When we talk about different deployment models, we are talking about private clouds, public clouds with multiple different cloud providers, and even legacy applications. When the different deployment… Read More
August 26, 2020 What to do when your Data Warehouse Chokes on Big Data This may seem like an academic question, but it is increasingly becoming a reality for modern businesses. What do you do when you have millions of records with infinite width and depth, and your data warehouse chokes? Do you trim your data? Do you add more infrastructure capacity? Or do you need to look… Read More
June 29, 2020 Connected Data in the Cloud Increases AI System Performance Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the core of the next wave of IT systems, and it is time to get ready. The past year has seen tremendous growth in the adoption of artificial intelligence systems to help companies improve operational insights and provide enhanced customer service experiences. If you aren’t leveraging AI to support your… Read More
May 26, 2020 Real-Time Decision-Making Use Cases in the Retail Industry – Part 3 In the first part of my blog on Real-Time Decision-Making (RTDM) highlighting Retail industry use cases, we discussed how combining existing historical data patterns with disparate new sources of data completes the Common Operational Picture (COP). To illustrate the use-case, we used an Actian customer, Kiabi, and how they used RTDM strategic capabilities to… Read More
May 18, 2020 Real-Time Decision-Making Use Cases in the Retail Industry – Part 2 In my last blog on Real-Time Decision-Making (RTDM), I shifted from a theoretical discussion of what RTDM is to uses cases that highlight key aspects of the value it can bring to business in periods of market uncertainty. I'm using the Retail Industry because its an Industry everyone knows something about coupled with the… Read More
May 14, 2020 Real-Time Decision-Making Use Cases in the Retail Industry In the last blog on Real-Time Decision-Making (RTDM), we discussed exactly what it is and why it matters. Before proceeding with more theoretical discussions, though, it’s probably worthwhile to give you some practical examples of RTDM and how data management, integration, and analytics support, build RTDM strategic capabilities that significantly impact business operations. Retail:… Read More
January 14, 2020 All Cloud Data Warehouses are NOT Created Equal There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about cloud data warehouses. One of the biggest ones is that all cloud data warehouses cost the same. On the surface, cloud data warehouse vendors may talk the same language – describing similar features, benefits and touting the performance gains of operating in the cloud. But… Read More
January 9, 2020 Develop a 360-degree view of your customer with Real-time Connected Data Warehouse Customer churn is a big concern for the sales and marketing teams. It is far easier (and cheaper) to keep your current customers happy than it is to acquire new customers. But how happy are your customers? Do you really know? Leveraging a connected data warehouse to develop a 360-degree view of your customers… Read More
December 9, 2019 Why Avalanche and DataConnect are Better Together … Part 3 How Avalanche and DataConnect work together to deliver an end-to-end data management solution Migrating to a cloud data warehouse makes strategic sense in the modern context of cloud services and digital transformation. Operationally, connecting disparate data sources into your cloud data warehouse, managing ongoing change in your IT environment, and delivering on the promises… Read More
December 2, 2019 Why Avalanche and DataConnect are Better Together … Part 2 Checklist: Critical Capabilities to Consider when Selecting a Data Integration Vendor That Enables Real-Time Analytics Use Cases Migrating to a cloud data warehouse makes strategic sense in the modern context of cloud services and digital transformation. Operationally, connecting disparate data sources into your cloud data warehouse, managing ongoing change in your IT environment, and… Read More
November 26, 2019 Why Avalanche and DataConnect are Better Together … Part 1 The Challenges of Connecting Disparate Data Sources and Migrating to a Cloud Data Warehouse Migrating to a cloud data warehouse makes strategic sense in the modern context of cloud services and digital transformation. Operationally, connecting disparate data sources into your cloud data warehouse, managing ongoing change in your IT environment, and delivering on the… Read More
November 6, 2019 It’s Back to the Future for Flat Files … Part One Why embedded software application developers adopted flat files Recently, my colleague here in Actian Product Marketing, Pradeep Bhanot, wrote a great blog on Data Historians in which he called for their retirement in favor of more modern databases to support time-series data processing and analytics. But, in some ways, historians are not as historic… Read More
October 21, 2019 Continuing to deliver on our hybrid vision: Avalanche on Microsoft Azure Today we are excited to announce the release of Actian Avalanche on Microsoft Azure. Azure is growing significantly as a platform in the enterprise space and becoming the de facto choice for retail analytics. Hence, making Actian Avalanche available on Microsoft Azure has been a priority for us. With this release, Actian Avalanche is… Read More
August 7, 2019 Using a Cloud Data Warehouse to Support Localized Systems Over the past few years, we’ve seen an increasing trend of regional governments applying unique restrictions and controls on where data is stored and how it is managed for users and businesses in their jurisdiction. The EU and Japan have recently imposed some strict rules about data export. A cloud data warehouse can be… Read More
August 5, 2019 Considering Cloud Migration? First, Read This Checklist. Most modern companies have fully embraced the cloud as the preferred place to host the applications that their businesses use. Many new applications are “cloud-native” or are designed specifically for operating in the cloud, while many of the legacy applications that your company uses today may have been designed to run on hardware in… Read More
July 31, 2019 Should You Have Separate Document, Time-Series, NoSQL and SQL Databases or Can a Single Database Support All of These Data Types and Requirements? Managing and analyzing heterogeneous data is a challenge for most companies, which the oncoming wave of Edge Computing-generated datasets has only exacerbated. This challenge stems from a rather large “data-type mismatch” as well as how and where data has been incorporated into applications and business process. How did we arrive here? At one time,… Read More
July 30, 2019 It’s not the Destination but the Journey – How Smart IT Managers are Forging Their Data Warehouse Path to the Cloud As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “it’s not the destination it’s the journey”. Unfortunately, this wise saying is not nearly applied as often as it should be to the contemporary topic of data warehouse modernization project design and execution. The result, thousands of data warehouse modernization projects unnecessarily end up in failure. Gartner’s Adam… Read More
July 30, 2019 So Many Choices…. Oh My! Choosing the Right Cloud Data Warehouse for My Modernization Project So, you have made the business case to modernize your data warehouse. Good choice! A modernization project, done correctly can deliver compelling and predictable results to your organization including millions in cost savings, new analytics capabilities and greater agility. But how do you effectively go about choosing the right data warehouse to migrate to?… Read More
June 10, 2019 2019 Data Management Trends and How They Will Affect Integration 2019 is becoming an exciting year for the data management community. Many of the trends of the past few years have successfully made the transition from emerging concepts to mainstream solution approaches. While trends are important building blocks about how companies approach their data management today, they are also providing insights into future capabilities… Read More
June 4, 2019 A Cost/Benefit Guide to the Data Warehouse Implementing a data warehouse is a big investment for most companies and the decisions you make now will impact both your IT costs and the business value you are able to create for many years. This concise data warehouse cost/benefit guide will help you understand what to expect, so you can make informed decisions… Read More
June 23, 2022 How Blind Spots and Data Gaps Decrease Data-Driven Business Value You can’t measure what you can’t see. If you consider this in terms of data, you also can’t analyze, curate, or leverage data blind spots to help create actionable insight. For many business technologists and business intelligence professionals, blind spots and data gaps create functional frustration and make it harder for teams to deliver… Read More
June 16, 2022 Why Do Data Scientists and Developers Need More Than a Data Lake? As organizations strive to get more value from the data they collect, it has become increasingly important that data scientists and developers have easy access to information collected in multiple sources in various sizes and formats. For many businesses, creating a data lake has become the first step in this process, forming a useful… Read More
June 7, 2022 The Business Technologist and Their Data Challenges According to a recent report from research firm Gartner, "organizations that effectively support business technologists are 2.6 times more likely to accelerate digital transformation." It makes sense: Because these professionals exist in the space between IT departments and non-tech teams, they can design and deploy solutions that deliver on both business and technology objectives.… Read More
January 18, 2023 Embracing Customer Profiling and Data Management Defining Exceptional Service Organizations always aim to give their customers the best experiences. There are several interpretations of what constitutes good and excellent service, and sometimes these terms are used interchangeably. However, many companies fail at achieving exceptional service because they do not understand their customers. Delivering any level of service requires that we… Read More
February 5, 2020 Must-Have Features of a Hybrid Cloud Data Warehouse Are you considering a hybrid cloud data warehouse for your company? Do you know what features to look for? If you want to maximize the value of this important infrastructure investment and give yourself the flexibility to adapt to changing business needs in the future, you need not just pick any solution; you need… Read More
January 28, 2020 Embedded Integration: Put the Analytics Compute Where the Data Lies. Selecting the best location for your analytics compute poses an interesting dilemma leading to thoughtful debate in some companies while others don't even consider the topic. If you're dealing with distributed systems, embedded sensors in machinery, mobile apps, or IoT devices, this topic is for you! Where you locate compute resources for analytics has… Read More
January 9, 2020 Why Total Cost of Ownership is the Wrong KPI for a Cloud Data Warehouse Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) has been an essential Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for the IT industry for many decades – and rightfully so. Large scale capital expenditures for IT infrastructure and data center resources were incurred at the onset of a project, allocated to different business functions and amortized (along with maintenance and… Read More
October 21, 2019 Getting Started with Avalanche on Azure Actian Avalanche on Microsoft Azure launched this week with a free cloud storage offer. This post will walk you through getting set up on Avalanche on Azure. You must first have an Actian account as a customer of Avalanche or have signed up for a free trial. After you log in to the Avalanche service, you… Read More
October 21, 2019 Avalanche Cloud Data Warehouse Launches on Azure with Free Storage Offer Today we announced the availability of Actian’s industry-leading Avalanche Cloud Data Warehouse Managed Service on Azure. Actian Avalanche is the only hybrid data warehouse solution on Azure and provides significant performance gains at a lower cost compared to alternatives. Learn why Avalanche on Azure makes sense for your business. We are also pleased to announce… Read More