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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
Defining good service All organizations want to provide good service to their customers. There are many definitions of what good service is from a giving and receiving perspective. Good and excellent service can mean the same thing in many cases. Then there is exceptional service; this is the type of service many organizations try…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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:…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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?…
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…
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…