June 1, 2023 Actian Achieves ISO 27001 Certification I am pleased to share that Actian has successfully achieved International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 certification in April 2023. Our certification scope includes all of Actian’s worldwide office and data center locations and covers the design, development, testing, support, and sale of all Actian products. What is ISO 27000? ISO 27000 is a… Read More
June 1, 2023 Using Data to Improve Your ROI Just Got Easier! Are your data analytics providing a positive return on investment (ROI) for your organization? Unfortunately, the answer may be no because the data isn’t offering enough value, meaning that it isn’t positively impacting business outcomes. Too often, data platforms are information graveyards. This may sound harsh, but Forrester estimates that less than 0.5% of all… Read More
May 25, 2023 How to Use Cloud Migration as an Opportunity to Modernize Data and Analytics Ensuring a hassle-free cloud migration takes a lot of planning and working with the right vendor. While you have specific goals that you want to achieve by moving to the cloud, you can also benefit the business by thinking about how you want to expand and optimize the cloud once you’ve migrated. For example,… Read More
May 19, 2023 Top Bottlenecks to Data Management Platform Adoption A data management platform (DMP) collects, manages, and analyzes data. This may sound just like a data analytics platform, but a DMP’s scope and purpose are more specific. It gathers audience data which is information about people who respond to advertisements or visit websites or other digital properties. The DMP uses this data to… Read More
May 19, 2023 Are You Accurately Assessing Data? Here are 7 Ways to Improve Data quality is essential for delivering reliable analytics that business users and decision-makers trust. Organizations should assess their data to ensure it meets their quality standards. Data quality management (DQM) is the practice of using data to serve an organization’s purposes with flexibility and agility. An assessment can also find gaps in data, such… Read More
May 9, 2023 Embedded Databases Everywhere: Top 3 IoT Use Cases The rise of edge computing is fueling demand for embedded devices for Internet of Things (IoT). IoT describes physical objects with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communications networks. Diverse technologies such as real-time data analytics, machine learning,… Read More
April 27, 2023 Using Cloud Data Analytics to Drive Engagement The decisions a business makes to help drive revenue and increase customer loyalty are only as good as the available data being referenced. Given the state of consumer demands and the changing ways they prefer to interact with brands, now is a crucial time for businesses to take stock of their cloud data analytics… Read More
April 21, 2023 6 Things You Must Know About Data Modernization Data is the heart of digital transformation and the digital+ economy. Data modernization moves data from siloed legacy systems to the digital world to help organizations optimize their use of data as a strategic asset. For a successful data modernization journey, the following are some important things you need to know: #1. Data Strategy A data… Read More
April 14, 2023 Top Technical Requirements for Embedded Analytics What is Embedded Analytics? More employees making decisions based on data insights leads to better business outcomes. Increasingly, data analytics needs to be surfaced to users via the right medium to inform better and faster decisions. This is why embedded analytics has emerged as an important way to help organizations unlock the potential of… Read More
April 4, 2023 7 Steps to Leveraging Segment Analysis and Predictive Analytics to Improve CX Today’s customers expect a timely, relevant, and personalized experience across every interaction. They have high expectations for when and how companies engage with them—meaning customers want communications on their terms, through their preferred channels, and with personalized, relevant offers. With the right data and analytics capabilities, organizations can deliver an engaging and tailored customer… Read More
March 23, 2023 Discover the Top 5 Data Quality Issues – And How to Fix Them! Poor quality data can lead to inaccurate insights, wasted resources, and decreased customer satisfaction. It is essential to ensure that all of your data is accurate and up-to-date to make the best decisions. Still, common issues and mistakes costs organizations millions of dollars annually in lost revenue opportunities and resource productivity. Thankfully, these pitfalls… Read More
March 17, 2023 How to Use Data to Get More Visibility into Your Supply Chain Supply chains have undergone—and continue to experience—major changes and disruption. Worker shortages, rapidly changing customer demands, logistics problems, transportation bottlenecks, and other factors have all contributed to challenges. Even sales patterns that used to be easy to predict, such as those based on holidays and seasonal buying, have become much harder to understand, amplifying… Read More
March 15, 2023 How Application Analytics Can Optimize Your Customer Experience Strategy With growing concerns of a recession, many application providers are turning their attention to developing a better customer experience strategy for their existing customers. This strategy often includes application analytics to improve customer retention and growth. Here’s a quick look at what application analytics is and ways to use it to measure and improve… Read More
February 28, 2023 5 Ways to Optimize Behavior Analysis for CX Customers are telling you what they want from your business. Are you listening? Do you even have the ability to listen so you can predict what they’ll do next? If not, it’s going to be very difficult to meet customer expectations by providing personalized and meaningful interactions. With the right platform and strategy, businesses… Read More
February 28, 2023 7 Customer Analytics Techniques to Get to Know Your Customer Better Would you like to know more about your customers to improve engagement? Are you able to make them loyal and increase their lifetime value? These are some of the questions that customer analytics can help answer. Customer analytics, also called customer data analytics, is the systematic examination of a company's customer information and behavior to identify,… Read More
February 23, 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 to achieve exceptional service because they do not understand their customers. Delivering any level of service requires that we… Read More
February 21, 2023 9 Essential Blog Articles to Help You Know Your Customer Better Competition for customers is more intense than ever. And landing customers is only half the battle. Keeping them happy is the other half. Creating customers for life entails nurturing relationships and predicting changing needs, or risk losing customers to competitors. Innovative marketers understand the importance of knowing their customers so they can meet their… Read More
February 16, 2023 5 Tips to Transition from Multichannel to Omnichannel Customers want outcomes and consistency as they move across their preferred channels. However, many organizations are struggling to transition from multichannel marketing strategies to omnichannel marketing strategies. What is Multichannel? A channel is any place where a customer interacts with the company. Most businesses rely on a mix of channels to interact with their customers… Read More
February 14, 2023 7 Ways Market Basket Analysis Can Make You More Money Market basket analysis, also referred to as affinity analysis, uses machine learning to increase sales by analyzing customer purchasing patterns. You can use market basket analysis for analyzing large data sets, such as purchase history, to reveal products and product groups, that customers are likely to purchase together. Market basket analysis is a very valuable… Read More
February 9, 2023 7 Customer Analytics Techniques to Get to Know Your Customer Better Would you like to know more about your customers to improve engagement? Are you able to make them loyal and increase their lifetime value? These are some of the questions that customer analytics can help answer. Customer analytics, also called customer data analytics, is the systematic examination of a company's customer information and behavior to identify,… Read More
February 7, 2023 5 Important Customer Experience Scoring Methods After reading “Forrester 2023 Customer Experience Predictions”, it was surprising to see one of its projections – 20% of customer experience (CX) programs will disappear this year. Forrester explains that companies for which great CX is not part of their brand identity will demand proof that CX spending is necessary. Unfortunately, 54% of CX… Read More
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
January 26, 2023 Three Steps to Better Data Management in 2023 Data management is a vital part of every modern organization. The best businesses today are using their data to inform business strategy, improve customer interactions and ultimately benefit the bottom line. So how can you improve your company’s data management system to reap maximum benefits in the new year? Let’s look at three tips… Read More
January 24, 2023 Building a Data Management Tech Stack for Tomorrow, Today An effective data management tech stack is essential to the health and success of any business, regardless of industry. Today, data is generated at faster rates and higher volumes than ever before, so businesses need systems that are unified and agile in order to keep up. As businesses try to keep up with the… Read More
January 19, 2023 Are you Aligned with the Future of Big Data? Global data has been rapidly growing for more than a decade, snowballing into massive quantities of data available to businesses today. Data is aggregated everywhere on the Internet – through web searches, social media, work files and text messages – as well as via IoT devices and sensors. This has led to impressive market… Read More
January 10, 2023 Prioritizing Data Protection for Data Managers Today’s data managers face numerous data-related obstacles on a regular basis – a surge in the pace of digital transformation, datasets growing increasingly more complex, and the proliferation of data by volume, just to name a few. However, one issue that is quickly surging up the priority list is the protection of data within… Read More
December 20, 2022 What is a Data Fabric and Why Do You Need It? What is a Data Fabric, Anyway? The data fabric has become a rising trend in technology over the last several years. Gartner defines a data fabric as: “a design concept that serves as an integrated layer (fabric) of data and connecting processes. A data fabric utilizes continuous analytics over existing, discoverable, and inferenced metadata… Read More
December 14, 2022 How to Overcome Painful Data Management Challenges and Deliver Impactful Customer Experiences An impactful customer experience (CX) requires accurate and relevant data that’s easy to access, manage, and use. For businesses today, this data is the lifeblood for knowing more about customers to optimize CX. However, many organizations are saddled with data management challenges that reveal roadblocks to this data, resulting in an inaccurate and incomplete… Read More
December 7, 2022 Uplevel Your Cloud Migration Strategy – No Matter the Size of Your Organization Cloud migration and digital transformation are among the top ways for businesses to modernize and keep pace alongside competitors. Moving these endeavors forward is more about the underlying parts involved than the infrastructure. Enabling data-driven operations and intelligence can help ensure success. When businesses begin their transformation and modernization journey, it may be inevitable… Read More
December 1, 2022 Data Silos Suck. Here’s How to Break Them Down Data management issues are common among businesses today. These issues have had direct negative impact for marketing departments, with over 60% of CMOs agreeing that gaps in marketing data and analytics (D&A) and marketing technology are hindering strategic growth strategies. Data and systems stored in silos represent a huge problem for data managers, who… Read More
November 21, 2022 Boosting CX through IoT and Edge Computing While not a new concept, edge computing is gaining steam, with more businesses embracing this technology at a breakneck pace. A recent Gartner report found that in 2022 alone, enterprises will create and process over 50% of the data they generate at the edge, outside the traditional data center or cloud infrastructure. This number… Read More
November 9, 2022 Management and Governance: Two Key Components of a Successful Data Strategy It’s no secret that businesses are using their abundance of data to generate insights that will advance their position in the marketplace or to make strategic decisions that will enhance value for their customers. Businesses that get the most out of their data aren’t those that happen to collect the most data, but those… Read More
September 22, 2022 What is the Future of Data Quality Management (DQM)? Today’s digital-first world has placed a tremendous emphasis on using enterprise data intelligently to drive important business decisions and manage risk. High-quality datasets function as the fuel for enterprises looking to map customers, track where they are in the lifecycle, and inform next steps on how to better engage them. However, simply having access… Read More
June 3, 2022 Technical Trifecta: The Future of Data Professionals Data-driven roles are in demand. According to research firm Deloitte, the number of postings for positions in data science, data engineering, machine learning (ML), and visualization now surpasses those for more familiar skill sets such as customer service, marketing, and public relations (PR). For database administrators (DBAs), business technologists, and data engineers, this increasing… 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
January 28, 2021 From Data Management to Decision Making for Empowerment Everyone in an organization makes decisions every day. They go through the process of identifying that a decision needs to be made, then gather data and relevant information from various sources to identify the choices that they can make. By Analyzing the data and other considerations based on their experience, they can make a… Read More
December 28, 2020 Four Data Analytics Predictions for 2021 – A Year to Recover and Accelerate In a year dominated by the dark cloud of the COVID-19 pandemic and the tragedies that ensued, we seem to be ending on a hopeful note. We saw the incredible power of human ingenuity, as not one but several vaccines have been developed at breakneck speed, surpassing even the most optimistic of expectations. We… Read More
April 29, 2020 SQLite – the Banana Slug of Embedded Databases Earlier this month, I kicked off a series of blogs about SQLite. The first looked at the advantages that SQLite offers over both flat files and the heavier lift of an enterprise-grade SQL databases – and it does offer distinct advantages over both. To a point. And that point was five years ago. Here's… Read More
April 7, 2020 Making the Transition from Flat Files to SQLite – pluses, but what’s missing against requirements? In December, January, and February, I posted a short series of blogs on Flat file systems. The series of blogs focus on the continued use of flat files and why they are no longer viable for use in the future. The first installment focused on flat files and why embedded software application developers readily adopted… 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
August 29, 2019 Start Learning Zen v14 Are you new to Actian Zen and want to learn how to get started with it? Check out our newly built YouTube channel! Topics include: Authorize an Actian Zen license for Windows Install the Actian Zen Backup Agent for Windows Configure the Actian Zen Backup Agent for Windows Instal Actian Zen into Linux Install… Read More
July 11, 2019 Will Data Management in Operational Technology Finally Be Standardized? The proliferation of Operational Technology (OT) within companies is increasing, which has led many to ask whether this will lead to standardization of how operational technology generated data is managed? The answer is “it’s complicated.” There is unlikely to be standardization of the data individual operational technology devices generate, but there will be new… Read More
June 12, 2019 Connecting to Actian Avalanche via JDBC Actian Avalanche delivers an operational data warehouse as a managed service in the cloud. Its developer-friendly high-performance analytics engine has been proven to outperform other popular analytics platforms without specialized hardware or complicated software development. Requires minimal setup, provides automatic tuning to reduce database administration effort and enables highly-responsive end-user BI reporting. This is… 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 1, 2019 Connecting to Actian Avalanche from Denodo via JDBC Actian Avalanche is the world’s fastest analytic data warehouse delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS). It has been designed for simplicity and doesn’t require any complex tuning to deliver consistent real-time performance for even the most challenging queries. Actian Avalanche is standards based, supporting the latest SQL, ODBC and JDBC standards, which enables it to easily fit into any… Read More
March 12, 2019 Announcing the Availability of Actian DataConnect on AWS Marketplace We are excited to announce that Actian DataConnect suite of products are now available on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace. Actian DataConnect is a hybrid integration solution that enables you to quickly and easily design, deploy, and manage integrations on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments. DataConnect engineered to help you cost-effectively integrate diverse data… Read More
August 3, 2018 Actian DataConnect v11.3 Released Greetings Actian DataConnect Community, It’s my pleasure to announce the availability of Actian DataConnect version 11.3 and I’d like to introduce you to some amazing new features! Orchestration Invoker The new Orchestration Invoker process design component provides you with the ability to create more reliable and efficient integration templates by invoking combinations of smaller,… Read More
March 12, 2018 Jolt Your Performance with Actian in Detroit and Cambridge This Week Interested in jolting your data analytics and database performance? Join Actian in two separate meetings this week in both Detroit, Michigan and Cambridge Massachusetts to talk about hybrid data, performance, analytics, and dataintegration: Tuesday, March 13: Come to the JOLT YOUR PERFORMANCE BREAKFAST between 7:30–9am at the award winning Apparatus Room Restaurant conveniently located… Read More
February 26, 2018 Get Ready for the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit 2018 in Grapevine, Texas The next big data and analytics conference is right around the corner with the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit, hosted at the Gaylord Texan Resort Hotel & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas from March 5-8, 2018 and Actian will be present, both on the show floor and in a presentation. Emma McGrattan, SVP, Engineering, will… Read More
February 9, 2018 Automatically Synchronize Your OLTP and OLAP Tables in Actian X (Ingres 11) A key feature of the latest update to our hybrid database Actian X (Ingres 11) is the inclusion of the x100 analytics engine and support for x100 tables. Adding a world class analytics engine to Actian X’s enterprise OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing) capability enables a new class of applications that can mix OLTP and analytic… Read More
January 9, 2018 When BIG Data Doesn’t Have to Be Using a Vector FARM to Make Big Data Analytics Fast and Easy I’ve been working in the IT industry a long time. What goes around, comes around. My favorite example is how centralized mainframe timesharing gave birth to decentralized client-server computing, now we are going back to timesharing, but in the cloud. Technology does… Read More
December 6, 2017 Fast Data Loading from Amazon S3 into Actian Vector via Apache Spark One of the questions we get asked for Vector Cloud deployments is how to load data from Amazon S3 into Vector in a fast and convenient way. This Blog should help answer some of your questions with a step-by-step guide. S3 is a popular object store for different types of data - log files,… Read More
November 16, 2017 Actian Vector – Community Edition Launches on AWS Marketplace I’m excited to announce that Actian Vector - Community Edition is now available on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace. The Community Edition is delivered as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) and is compatible with the AWS 1-Click launch experience. Why is this important for you as a developer? If you are a SQL… Read More
August 8, 2017 Can Your Applications Find You? One important trend in database management is integrating location data better to improve insights about events and activities that matter to your business. …Interest in analyzing geospatial/location data has increased over the past four years from 26% to 36%.” Source: Gartner Survey Analysis: Big Data Investments Begin Tapering in 2016, September 2016 Tracking customer… Read More
May 30, 2017 Predictions for the hybrid data landscape The Age of Data has arrived, with new data sources, targets and processing models proliferating madly across enterprises of all sizes. While data has never been more valuable to a business — it now informs the who, what, where, when and how of decision making — this new hybrid data landscape introduces new challenges.… Read More
May 2, 2017 Architecting Next-Generation Data Management Solutions This is part 2 of our conversation with Forrester analyst Michele Goetz. Please click here to read the first post: Rethink Hybrid for the Data-Driven Enterprise. After a recent Actian webinar featuring Forrester Research, John Bard, senior director of product marketing at Actian, asked Forrester principal analyst Michele Goetz more about next-generation data management solutions.… Read More
April 26, 2017 HTAP at Actian: The Best of Both Worlds in Data Management One of the most exciting trends for the balance of this decade will be HTAP, or Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing - a recently-coined term representing the next generation of hybrid, converged software infrastructure that can handle both traditional Transactional Data Management AND modern Analytic Data Management workloads. Every business is struggling to find new tools… Read More
April 25, 2017 Rethink Hybrid For The Data-Driven Enterprise After a recent Actian webinar featuring Forrester Research, John Bard, senior director of product marketing at Actian, asked Forrester principal analyst Michele Goetz more about the trends in today's enterprise data market. Here is the first part of that conversation: John Bard, Actian: The enterprise market tends to think of “hybrid” as on-premises or cloud,… Read More
April 19, 2017 Hybrid Data is a Gamechanger Imagine this scenario - you have just "clicked" on an item that you are ordering online. What kind of "data trail" have you generated? Well, you are sure to have generated a transaction - the kind of "business event" that goes into a seller's accounting system, and then on to their data warehouse for subsequent sales… Read More
September 2, 2014 Never underestimate the importance of good data quality One of the things I talk to organizations about regularly when they’re trying to get their heads around big data and analytics is the importance of data quality before they start with analytics. Here, I am reminded of the old database acronym of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out), and yet I am astounded by… Read More
August 4, 2014 The Evolution of Data Integration with the Internet of Things Loraine Lawson, always does a wonderful job covering the world of integration, and this article that covers the integration challenges and opportunities of the Internet of Things (IoT) is no exception. Besides big data, I see the IoT as one of the most interesting data integration challenges coming down the road. Perhaps it’s time… Read More
July 1, 2022 Is Big Data Useful to Anyone? Does it Have Intrinsic Value? Embarking on a big data project can be daunting. If you believe that you need insight into your business activity, that you have to collect a large “big data” stash, and that you need to analyze it all to generate worthwhile insight, you will likely feel swamped by the task ahead to get any… Read More
June 21, 2022 Cloud Economics – The Advantage of Moving Your Data to the Cloud (TCO) Cloud economics is a relatively new term, but it is growing in importance as businesses increasingly move their data to the cloud. As more organizations look for new ways to model their business in support of scalability and agility, it has become imperative that they better understand the short and long-term costs of cloud… 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
May 4, 2018 A moment of Zen for your resting IoT data on its journey to data nirvana Early in my career I studied Systems Engineering at night which is where I first came across the term IPO which is an acronym for Input-Processing-Output. My lecturer taught us every software function has three basic sequential steps, reading input data, processing that data and eventually outputting it. In a more complex system, such… Read More
February 12, 2018 See Actian at TDWI Las Vegas, February 12-14, 2018 Starting off the new year in style by hitting Las Vegas and attending the annual TDWI Conference focused on big data and analytics? Come see Actian at on the exhibit hall floor, Booth #205, Forum Ballroom of Caesar's Palace, at these times: Tuesday, February 13: 11:15am - 2:15pm and 5:00pm-7:00pm (Leadership Summit reception in… Read More
November 27, 2017 The Big Show: Visit Actian at AWS re:Invent 2017 in Las Vegas The largest cloud computing conference of 2017 is now here in AWS re:Invent and it’s taking over Las Vegas in a big way. An estimated 40,000 engineers, product leads, marketers, technical architects, and expert users from around the world will be descending on The Strip, attending keynotes, bootcamps, demos, hackathons, and in-depth hands-on training… Read More
November 21, 2017 Announcing Actian Vector – Community Edition support for Mac OS X via Docker We’re pleased to announce that Actian Vector 5.0 Community Edition now includes support for Mac OS X via Docker. Over the last few years Mac OS X has become increasingly popular with Developers, as has Docker, the virtualization platform that allows you to bundle applications along with their native OS and run them in… Read More
April 27, 2017 Introducing Actian X – the new Ingres Last week, Actian introduced the the new Ingres - Actian X Hybrid Database, combining the industry-leading Ingres RBMS with the record breaking analytic database Vector. With column-based storage, vector processing, multi-core parallelism (and more), Actian X puts amazing performance in the hands of Ingres developers. We've also bundled two other really big features: 1)… Read More
September 7, 2022 The Data Challenges of Telemetry Telemetry is the automated communications process by which measurements are made and data collected at remote points. The data is then transmitted to receiving equipment for monitoring. The word ‘telemetry’ is derived from Greek roots: tele = remote, and metron = measure. Telemetry is not a new concept, that’s for sure. We’ve been watching… Read More
July 14, 2014 Emergence of the Chief Data Officer Caffeinates Data Integration We often watch new positions sprout up around emerging technology. These days, we see new titles such as the chief cloud officer, and other titles that seem just as trendy. However, the strategic use of data within many enterprises led those in charge to assign data management responsibility to one person; the chief data… Read More
