Actian Life

Introducing Our Actian 2022 Interns!

Actian Corporation

July 28, 2022

It’s National Intern Day, which means it’s time to talk about Actian’s Summer Internship Program! Since launching this 12-week program in 2020, Actian’s internships have been centralized around intern capstone projects, and engaging virtual events, all while being fully remote – this year however, they were able to add the exciting addition of a hybrid-remote Intern Orientation.

My name is Gabrielle Kray, and I am halfway through my internship as Actian’s Employee Experience Intern. I have learned so much about the People field these past 7-weeks and have felt appreciated for what I have brought to the table every step of the way. Being a global organization, it has also been an exciting time of meeting and working with people cross-functionally. I am looking forward to learning more as I continue my internship but let’s talk about what has been going on so far!

The first thing to note about Actian’s internship program is that every internship has a capstone project. This project is meant to be the interns’ focus, where over the course of the twelve weeks they will be able to plan, organize, and complete it with the guidance of their manager and buddy. As Actian is a remote-first organization, this helps ensure that interns do not fall into the pitfalls of other internships – where interns are brought on as less expensive, temporary workers, with unfocused objectives or relegated meaningless tasks. This helps ensure that it is a learning experience that benefits the interns, as well as the organization.

The project I am working on this summer is to migrate Actian’s New Hire Orientation to an asynchronous format, that a new hire can go through at their own pace. The benefits to this would be that the program will be digestible, and engaging, and it provides us an opportunity to be more thorough. What’s more, it will provide course materials they can return to in case they need reference information. In addition to the asynchronous orientation, there will also be a monthly synchronous gathering of new hires to answer all their questions, provide a networking opportunity, and offer engagement with our leadership. Altogether, this orientation will be a proper welcome to our company!

So far, I have planned out how the orientation will flow, generated ideas on how to create an engaging program, and got to work creating the materials we will be presenting. Soon, with the help of the Employee Experience Team, I will be recording content and uploading it to the course to our internal platform Actian Academy! I have faced challenges, like worrying I would not reach my completion goals, or not always feeling like I knew all the content I like I should, but in the end, everything was a learning curve, and my team had my back. It is really satisfying to see how the first half of my internship, which was spent learning the ins and outs of new hire orientation and creating a game plan with my team, is starting to come to life!

The second feature to note about our internship is that it has been fully remote (outside of the optional in-person attendance of Intern Orientation). Actian has provided all the essentials for completing our projects, along with structured learning plans, and we don’t even have to worry about commuting! As with most remote first companies, we communicate through chat, email, and video calls. We also have employee events and weekly intern events to give us space to connect.

Speaking of weekly intern events, we recently had an exciting one. Rae Coffman-Bueb and Sara Lou, who direct the intern program, sent each of us a small kit that included tea candles, a small lighter, and all the necessary ingredients for s’mores! The event was called “Tiny Camp Fire” where we lit three little tea lights in a triangle and roasted ‘mallows while telling spooky stories. I certainly got the chills!

This year, we had an aspect to the internship program that hadn’t been an option until now – the ability to attend Intern Orientation in-person at the Round Rock, Texas office! Those that wanted to were flown in from all over the country, where we got to not only attend the hybrid orientation, but also get in some team building time too! My fondest memory was when we all bussed down to the Congress Avenue Bridge and watched thousands of bats flood the sky during their migration. We then made our way down to the round rock for which the city of Round Rock was named and took this iconic picture:

Actian 2022 interns at the Round Rock, Texas office

It was such a blast, and I hope that in future years the in-person orientations will continue!

As this is International Intern Day, I would like to introduce our group of Actian’s 2022 interns. They are a phenomenal bunch!

Ashwin Ramakrishna (he/they)
Revenue Operations Analyst Intern

Ashwin Ramakrishna is from Saratoga, California. He attends UC Davis and is an incoming Junior in Economics. In Actian, they are currently working to automate the sales recommendation engine process to make analysis in lead processing more efficient. He learned about the internship through his family friend who is an Actian Employee and thought it would be an incredible learning opportunity. In their free time, Ashwin teaches himself piano, and enjoys going to concerts.

Henry McKinney (he/him)
Cloud Operations Analyst Intern

Henry McKinney is Actian’s Cloud Operations Analyst Intern. He is currently studying at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York, majoring in Psychology, and minoring in Math, Finance, and Analytics. He first found Actian through LinkedIn, met his manager, and decided it would be a wonderful place to work, especially with the opportunity to work in the cloud space.

Henry is currently assisting the project manager on the cloud operations team. Using JIRA, he is helping reorganize tasks, as well as implementing a new project type that has additional features such as timeline view and priority. He values getting this bird’s eye view of an IT operations team and understanding of an Agile mindset. He is learning how to make operations efficient and scalable by working with developers and project managers in the cloud space.

During his free time, he loves to read non-fiction, train for hockey, and learn about new tech.

Nikita Gaurihar (she/her)
Engineering Intern

Nikita Gaurihar is an Engineering Intern at Actian. She is currently pursuing a Master of Information Systems at the Northeastern University in Boston; however, she already has a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from India where she is from! She moved from India to the United States to gain more opportunities in roles that focus on data engineering, analytics, and Machine Learning.

During this internship, she is working on a project to design and develop a data pipeline solution to create a Data Vault Schema for Actian. She values the experience she is gaining by working with data, as it will bring her closer to her goal of becoming a Data Scientist!
When she is relaxing after work, she enjoys playing badminton with her husband & friends, or taking a stroll on the beach.

Linson Miranda (he/him)
Business Intelligence and Analytics Intern

Linson is pursuing his Master’s in Business Analytics at the University of Texas at Dallas. A techie at heart, he knew he wanted to work at an organization where he would have the opportunity to grow significantly as a summer intern and create an impact on the company’s future. And Actian was the perfect fit!

This summer, Linson is working as a Business Intelligence and Analytics Intern with the Customer Enablement & Revenue Operations team. Keeping in line with Actian’s aim to grow its market footprint, his capstone project revolves around building a customer 360 demo using the Actian Data Platform, their flagship product.

When he is not busy analyzing customer data or reading, Linson loves playing the guitar and binge-watching sit-coms!

Joshua Reyes (he/him)
Finance Intern

Josh is a Finance Major studying at the University of San Francisco. His aim this year was to gain experience in his field, and when he found this internship, he appreciated that it was specifically focused on financial analysis, which is his main interest! His internship capstone project is to create a financial forecasting model to predict future costs from cloud service vendors that Actian works with.

So far, Josh has valued experiencing the work environment and finds it interesting seeing the implementation of the skills he learned in college. When he wants to have a fun time, he enjoys hanging out with friends, watching sports, and going to the gym!

Riya Singla (she/her)
DevOps Intern

Riya is majoring in Computer Science at UT Austin. When she applied for Actian, she was originally interested in the Software Engineering internship, but when she received a recommendation to try out DevOps, she decided to go for it! As her main project this summer, Riya is writing a script to automatically deploy Terraform templates every time a git repository updates. During her experience as DevOps, she learned new perspective on software engineering, understanding that code in the writing process needs to be checked for a strong framework before it reaches a production environment. She hopes to return to the world of software engineering with this new perspective to enrich her work.

Maddie Heath (she/her)
Marketing Intern

Maddie Heath is from Carmel, Indiana, and a rising Junior at IU Bloomington’s Kelley School of Business. She first found the Actian Internship online and was excited at the opportunity to work within the technology industry! While her primary responsibilities are managing Actian’s blog and tagging content via UberFlip, she manages many different projects and continually offers support to the marketing team. Despite her allergies, Maddie is a cat person, and has two cats. She spends her time fundraising for charity through designing art and clothes and spending time with her family.

Andi Wagner (she/they)
Software Engineering Intern

Andi is based in Round Rock, Texas, close to the Actian office! They are currently a senior at the University of Dallas, majoring in Computer Science. When she came across this internship, they thought it would be a great learning and networking opportunity. What more, she found that based on the reviews online, employees loved the company, so she chose to apply!

Their main project this summer is to implement an Apache Camel extension into DataConnect, which will allow for the implementation of Camel routes seamlessly through the product. After work, Andi enjoys spending time with her dog, Loki, exploring, eating, and playing video games.

Matthew Jackson (he/him)
Zen Engineering Intern

Matt is from Round Rock, Texas, right by the Actian office! He is an incoming freshman for the Colorado School of Mines and will be studying Computer Science. He is an engineering intern, working with the team that manages Zen, Actian’s database management system. He started off his internship focusing on the migration from CMWiki to Confluence, by writing a program to scrape data from CMWiki, process it, and upload it all to Confluence. Once he completed this project, he started his next one, setting up an app that will serve as an example of how customers can use BRestful API in Btrieve 2. This will improve the implementation of the product for users. Outside of work, Matt really enjoys music. One of his favorite pastimes is busking on the street with his Jazz Band.

Gabrielle Kray (she/her)
Employee Experience Intern

Gabrielle is from Sunnyvale, California. She is an incoming freshman at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. This summer she joined the Employee Experience team as an intern, finding it the perfect opportunity to explore the field of HR. Her focus during her internship is to build an asynchronous new hire orientation that is digestible, engaging, and thorough. She found that this project gave her perspective on the needs and experiences of a new hire. After work, Gabrielle loves spending time with her family and friends, and taking short hikes in nature.

Written by Gabrielle Kray

About Actian Corporation

Actian empowers enterprises to confidently manage and govern data at scale. Actian data intelligence solutions help streamline complex data environments and accelerate the delivery of AI-ready data. Designed to be flexible, Actian solutions integrate seamlessly and perform reliably across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. Learn more about Actian, the data division of HCLSoftware, at actian.com.

Data Integration

Breaking Down Data Silos Fuels Faster Innovation

Actian Corporation

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 that depend on them to share their goods don’t get nurtured with the business intel they need.

Over time in diverse industries, we have seen that communication silos are gradually breaking down. This trend has accelerated during the pandemic, thanks to business tools like Zoom, Slack and Microsoft Teams, which allow people around the world to “sit together” in virtual rooms to communicate with each other and share information with the press of a button and a glance at the camera.

Not so fast though. The bad news is that data silos still exist despite those advancements. As organizations try to use more data for both strategic and tactical purposes, they’re struggling with their ability to manage the torrents of new data that’s flowing in and unlock data that’s been siloed away. Add in cybersecurity challenges and the business will have to strengthen their position in a stronger way.

What are Data Silos and How are They Created?

Data silos are independent pockets of data within an organization. Often aligned to either business functions or IT systems, data silos are accessible to a limited group of people. Companies that experience this maintain separate sets of data for functions such as customer service, product development, marketing, manufacturing, and HR. Because data is separated and fragmented, decision-makers at all levels of the organization are prevented from seeing the holistic view of how their assessments, actions, and decisions impact the company – and more importantly, how it impacts their customers. Even companies that have invested in data warehouses often report data silo issues, which are caused when multiple warehouses contain duplicative data.

Data silos come about a number of different ways. Most often, they’re an extension of how organizations are structured and managed as a whole. Mergers and acquisitions often create separate structures with units operating independently and maintaining their own data sets. Some corporate cultures create disincentives for data sharing, while others set up decentralized IT purchasing mechanisms. This leads to the deployment of databases and business applications that aren’t compatible with or connected to other systems.

What Happens When Data is Trapped in Silos?

Data trapped in silos limit organizations’ ability to get the most from operational workloads that cross over departmental boundaries, drive automation, and aid decision-support and situational awareness (human and machine). Digital transformation of business operations cannot reach total efficiency if the data pipelines that support them are brittle and run on incomplete and stale data.

Data silos exert a long list of hidden costs. Managers that can’t access employee performance records while scheduling shifts will encounter reduced productivity. Leaders that can’t mine customer insights before a key product launch will miss out on business opportunities. Customer service departments lacking cross-channel data on customer transactions will struggle to reverse churn. And a general lack of trust in data itself limits its use and its business benefits.

If data is stuck in silos, it creates pain points for the professionals who manage data as well. Maintaining multiple databases that don’t communicate with each other leads to spreadsheet sprawl. Having separate tools for the access and preparation of each dataset forces teams to learn and maintain more tools than they prefer. Complexity in the process can also cause IT bottlenecks for data access, ingestion, and preparation of corporate data, particularly from the enterprise data warehouse, mission-critical enterprise resource planning systems, and external datasets.

Start With Our Organizational Culture to Break Down Data Silos

Companies that place importance on instituting data governance initiatives while forging a data strategy that aligns with their own corporate goals will fare well in breaking down silos and bridging together business teams. Once these forward-thinking companies overcome the hurdles of making that possible and develop a business strategy with a tech stack to ignite that – more possibilities open. They’ll be able to connect, manage, and analyze data to serve the best interests of their businesses. This is where Actian can help.

Actian’s Data Platform empowers LOB management and their business technologists to break down silos and use real-time data and analytics to extract maximum value from their SaaS, BI, and advanced analytics tool investments.

Breaking down data silos fuels faster innovation across a broad range of initiatives including product advancements, research, services, trends in risk, demographics, and other external factors. Whether ambitious companies want to grow their target revenues or drive stronger product adoption amongst their user base – having access to reliable and fresh data can accelerate their efforts at scale, and perhaps even shift business direction quickly if needed.

About Actian Corporation

Data Analytics

How the Right Data Platform Approach Unleashes Competitive Advantage

Jennifer Jackson

July 19, 2022

For some time now, we at Actian have been focusing squarely on making the Actian Data Platform the most trusted, flexible, and easy-to-use data platform on the market.

These, of course, are traits that anybody in any industry would want to trumpet. But they’re especially important in the world of data, where the market is shifting rapidly and customers are making technology decisions that will determine their level of business success for years to come.

Here’s what we mean. In recent years, data’s role as a competitive asset has grown substantially. As data volumes swell and calls for data-driven insights increase, companies have scrambled to piece together the best possible ways to store, access, manage, and analyze this critical resource. Many vendors have responded by pursuing a “platform approach,” trying to pull capabilities previously siloed in data warehouses, data lakes, data hubs, and analytics hubs into new, more versatile data platforms.

It’s driven a market convergence where industry upstarts and veterans are competing in the same field. We believe we’re positioned well in this competition for a few reasons. We have the data expertise and knowledge the new, born-in-the-cloud data vendors don’t have. Traditional, legacy brands, meanwhile, are struggling to pivot. We bring all of this expertise to the cloud in a way that makes data easy.

We’ve built trust, flexibility, and ease of use into the Actian Data Platform in several ways.

Through Superior Price Performance

The platform outperformed, on speed and price performance, four other leading cloud services, including Google BigQuery, in an Enterprise Strategy Group Technical Validation report. Actian Data Platform performed up to 7.9 times faster with up to 92% lower cost for simulated queries run by five concurrent users of cloud-based data warehouses.

Through Native Integration

For customers to use born-in-the-cloud vendor platforms for analytics purposes, they have to partner with a data integration vendor. In the Actian platform, the warehouse, database, and integration capabilities are native. Hundreds of connectors are available, allowing customers to connect any source to any target. It’s built into the platform, not the warehouse, and customers can consume services all through the same mechanism.

Through REAL, Real-Time Data

A lot of vendors claim to return data queries in real-time, but as they’re updating the database with real-time information, they experience latency. In Actian, queries still run at the same speed. Customers are powered to have data in their hands when they truly need it.

Through Hybrid Deployment

For Actian, it’s the ability to use the same platform to deploy on different clouds, on-premises, and in hybrid environments. Pure cloud players can’t operate in hybrid or on-prem situations, and major cloud providers won’t operate instances provided by a chief competitor. The platform is agnostic.

Actian customers are seeing value in the platform approach. The London Stock Exchange is using Actian for trade analysis, enabling customers to make smart trade decisions in the moment. The AA, an insurance company in EMEA, offers on-demand insurance quotes on its website using Actian’s real-time engine.

Companies that win the most use data as a key differentiator. Leveraging a platform that inspires trust, performs flexibly and is easy to use enables them to separate themselves in the market. We believe our vision and capabilities make Actian the perfect company to partner with to unlock the competitive advantage data brings.

About Jennifer Jackson

Jennifer"JJ" Jackson is CMO of Actian, leading global marketing strategy with a data-driven approach. With 25 years of branding and digital marketing experience and a background in chemical engineering, JJ understands the power of analytics from both a user and marketer perspective. She's spearheaded SaaS transitions, partner ecosystem expansions, and web modernization efforts at companies like Teradata. On the Actian blog, she discusses brand strategy, digital transformation, and customer experience. Explore her recent articles for real-world lessons in data-driven marketing.

Data Intelligence

What is Data Virtualization?

Actian Corporation

July 11, 2022

Committing to a data-driven project can sometimes feel like opening Pandora’s box. To avoid getting lost along the way, you need to have a global, secure, and agnostic view of all your data. Among the avenues to explore, there is data virtualization.

Companies that embark on the path of a data-driven strategy have a compelling need to rely on real-time data. All processes and thought patterns are oriented around data to make faster and more relevant decisions to bring more value to their customers. However, there is a challenge: the more data you use, the more likely it is to be scattered across different platforms, and therefore, the more you need to reconcile your data sources. The risk? Degrading the effectiveness of your data-driven project. To avoid exposure to this risk, there is a path to explore.

This path involves deploying an advanced data integration methodology, called data virtualization.

What is Data Virtualization?

Data is central to your company’s strategy, making it essential to collect data from different sources. However, this creates the risk of having scattered information. When data is disparate, it’s difficult to get an overview that allows for quick and informed decision-making. If some of your data remains in the shadows, if it doesn’t fit into the scope of your analyses, there is a risk of making mistakes.

The objective of data virtualization is to fight against this scattering by bringing together all your data, regardless of their origin, without moving or copying them. The principle is to create a single virtual zone where all your data assets are available regardless of origin or format. Data virtualization provides a global, unified, organized, and encapsulated view of all your data, whether it comes from the same or different data sources, without having to manipulate or move it. A single “virtual” data layer is created to deliver unified data services.

What are the Benefits of Data Virtualization?

Data virtualization supports multiple applications and users while providing:

Faster access to data, limiting the latency between data collection and exploitation.
Significantly reduced time to market for data.
A decrease in data redundancy.
Agile decision-making.

The first essential benefit of this approach is to have a global and exhaustive vision of all your data. But data virtualization also has another advantage: you don’t have to move, copy or manipulate data, which remains stored in its original platforms. Because the source data is preserved, it cannot be altered or degraded and therefore retains its original quality. And because it is not manipulated, you save considerable time in making decisions.

How Does Data Virtualization Work?

A data virtualization solution works as a single platform that provides access to all data in a virtual environment. The data can be accessed directly, without being moved from its original source. This not only simplifies data access to the maximum extent but also minimizes the risk of degrading or damaging the data. A data virtualization solution aggregates all structured and unstructured data sources to offer a virtual visualization, all available via a dashboard. It allows you to visualize metadata while eliminating the complexity of reconciling disparate data sources.

To reduce storage costs, optimize data governance, simplify access to data and, ultimately, develop your data-driven culture, why not start data virtualization?

About Actian Corporation

Data Security

Data Security, Data Privacy, and Moving to the Public Cloud

Actian Corporation

July 7, 2022

Data security and privacy when moving to the cloud.

The cloud has revolutionized the way modern businesses operate. By moving to the cloud, companies can access data and applications from anywhere globally, scale their remote infrastructures in real-time, and take advantage of cloud-based analytics and machine learning tools.

Transitioning to cloud-based applications and solutions offers unparalleled flexibility for businesses, but it also comes with certain risks. When moving to the cloud, one of the biggest concerns for businesses is data security and data privacy, which are essential for companies to get right.

The Importance of Data Security and Privacy in Today’s Cloud Landscape

The cloud has become the go-to platform for businesses of all sizes. It is flexible, scalable, and cost-effective, making it the perfect solution for organizations looking to improve their IT infrastructure. However, with the cloud comes new security challenges.

Data security and privacy are top concerns for companies moving to the cloud. And rightfully so—the cloud is a shared environment, which means your data is stored on servers that are managed by other organizations. This creates risk if the servers are not properly secured.

To add to some of these concerns, recent high-profile data breaches have made headlines and spotlighted the importance of effective cloud security. In 2019, Capital One experienced a data breach in which a hacker was able to access the personal information of more than 100 million people’s credit card applications and accounts stored on cloud data servers.

This instance and many others prove how important it is for companies to maintain a robust cloud security strategy to successfully protect their data and that of their customers.

Best Practices for Securing Cloud Data Platforms

While there are risks associated with moving more data through the cloud, there are best practices businesses can follow to ensure their cloud data platforms meet their organization’s data security and privacy requirements.

Encrypting Data at Rest and in Transit

One of the most important things companies can do to secure their cloud data is to encrypt it. This makes it much more difficult for hackers to access and steal data if they penetrate your cloud servers.

There are two main types of encryption: at-rest and in-transit. At-rest encryption refers to encrypting data that is stored on cloud servers. In-transit encryption protects data as it is being transmitted between different systems—for example, when you are sending an email or accessing a website.

Both at-rest and in-transit encryption are essential for securing cloud data. And while at-rest data is typically considered more secure because of its reduced attack surface, it is critical to ensure it’s adequately encrypted as it is targeted more by attackers.

Many different cloud encryption key management systems are available, so do your research and choose one that meets your organization’s specific needs.

Implementing Identity and Access Management

Another best practice for securing cloud data is implementing an identity and access management (IAM) system. IAM is a process of managing users’ identities, roles, and permissions. It is designed to allow authorized users access to the data and resources they need while preventing unauthorized entry.

IAM can be used to control who has access to your cloud servers and data and what actions they can take. For example, you can use IAM to grant read-only access to specific files or folders for some users while allowing others to read, write, and delete files.

Using Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is an additional layer of security that can be added to cloud data platforms. MFA requires users to provide more than one piece of evidence (or factor) to verify their identity before being granted access to a system.

The most common type of MFA is two-factor authentication, which requires a user to provide a password and a one-time code generated by an app or sent via text message.

Adding MFA can help to further protect your cloud data by making it more difficult for hackers to gain access to your servers. Even if a user’s password is obtained, hackers would also need the one-time code making it less likely that your storage solutions could be compromised.

Establishing Real-Time Monitoring and Protection

Taking a proactive approach to cloud security is always best, and an effective way to do so is to establish real-time monitoring and protection. This means setting up alerts, so you are notified immediately if there is any suspicious activity on your cloud servers.

Most cloud data platforms have some form of built-in security monitoring that helps keep an eye on your servers and data, but many third-party cloud security tools can provide additional protection.

When deciding on the level of security monitoring and protection that is right for your organization, it is essential to consider the type of data you are storing in the cloud and the sensitivity of that data. For example, if you are storing financial or personal health information, you will need a higher level of security than what is needed to store basic contact information.

Either way, it is essential to have a form of monitoring and protection in place so you can quickly identify and respond to any potential threats before they evolve into business-wide security and compliance issues.

Balancing Cloud Flexibility and Adequate Security

Cloud data platforms offer flexibility, which is often one of the main reasons organizations choose to use them. However, this flexibility can also present some challenges when securing cloud data.

Organizations must strike a balance between providing adequate security for their cloud data and maintaining the flexibility they need to run their business.

The good news is that many different security measures can be taken to protect cloud data. With a proactive approach and by implementing the best security practices, organizations can keep their data safe while enjoying the benefits of using a cloud data platform.

About Actian Corporation

Data Intelligence

Does a Data Catalog Help Companies With Data Stewardship Programs?

Actian Corporation

July 6, 2022

By implementing a data stewardship program in your organization, you ensure not only the quality of your data but also that it can be used easily and effectively by all your employees. As a key player in data governance and management, the Data Steward needs specific tools, the first of which is the data catalog.

The role of data in companies is becoming increasingly strategic, and not just for large organizations. Indeed, to define business strategies, manage distribution, or organize production, the exploitation of data constitutes a major competitive advantage. To deliver its full potential, data must be reliable, of high quality, and perfectly organized. These characteristics are linked to a discipline: Data Stewardship.

The Data Steward, also known as the Master of Data, acts as the guarantor of optimal data exploitation. How? By centralizing all data, regardless of its source, in an environment that is accessible to all business lines in a simple, intuitive, and operational manner. A Data Stewardship program is based on a rigorous methodology, a global vision of available data, and an ambition to rationalize data to develop a strong data culture. However, vision, understanding, and methodology do not exempt the Data Steward from relying on the right tools to accomplish their missions: a data catalog is one of the essential tools for a successful Data Stewardship project.

A Data Catalog’s Objectives

A data catalog exploits metadata – data on data – to create a searchable repository of all enterprise information assets. This metadata, collected by various data sources (Big Data, Cloud services, Excel sheets, etc.), is automatically scanned to enable users of the catalog to search for their data and get information such as the availability, freshness, and quality of a data asset. A data catalog centralizes and unifies the metadata collected so that it can be shared with IT teams and business functions. This unified view of data allows organizations to:

Sustain a data culture.
Accelerate data discovery.
Build agile data governance.
Maximize the value of data.
Produce better and faster.
Ensure good control over data.

The Benefits of a Data Catalog for Data Stewards

From importing new data sources to tracking information updates, the ability of a data catalog to track and monitor metadata in real-time automatically allows data stewards to gain efficiency. A data catalog provides 360° visibility into your data from its origin to all of its transformations over time. There are four key benefits to using a data catalog as part of a Data Stewardship program:

Benefit 1: Maintain up-to-Date Documentation

Your data is constantly active. It is collected, valued, exploited, enriched… To have a perfect understanding of your data assets, you need up-to-date documentation regarding its data sources and how they are used. A data catalog is designed to do just that.

Actian Data Intelligence Platform advantage: Our catalog automatically retrieves and collects metadata through our APIs and scanners to always ensure that your data is up-to-date. View your data’s origins and transformations over time with our smart lineage capabilities.

Benefit 2: Ensure Data Quality

The first vocation of a data catalog is to keep a clear view of your data via metadata. The definitions, structures, sources, uses, procedures to follow…by nature, metadata management by a data catalog contributes to guarantee the quality of your data.

Actian Data Intelligence Platform advantage: Our data catalog enables your Data Stewards to build flexible metamodel templates for predefined and custom item types. Simply drag & drop your properties, tags, and other fields into your documentation templates for all your catalog items.

Benefit 3: Comply With Data Regulations

Compliance with data regulations is a crucial issue in a Data Stewardship program. A data catalog, through its ability to organize data and centralize it in a clear, healthy, and readable environment, helps to comply with these regulatory requirements.

Actian Data Intelligence Platform advantage: Through machine learning capabilities, our Data Catalog speeds up time-consuming tasks by analyzing similarities between existing personal data. It provides smart recommendations by identifying and giving suggestions to tag personal data.

Benefit 4: Monitor Data Lifecycle

Between governance, quality, and security, your Data Stewardship project implies monitoring the lifecycle of your data in real-time. The data catalog responds to this challenge by offering you the possibility to monitor all activities affecting your data.

Actian Data Intelligence Platform advantage: our data catalog provides Data Stewards with a dashboard that tracks and monitors metadata activity. Check the completion levels of your documentation, the most frequently accessed and searched for catalog items, the connectivity status of your catalog, and get smart recommendations on the sensitivity level and additional properties to add to your fields.

Organization, knowledge, transparency, scalability…a data catalog is tailored to accompany your Data Stewardship project.

Start a Data Stewardship Program

Actian Data Intelligence Platform Data Catalog provides a metadata management solution that enables Data Stewards to overcome the challenges associated with handling increasingly large volumes of data. Our solution helps organizations maximize the value of their data by reducing the time spent on complex and time-consuming documentation tasks, and by breaking data silos to increase enterprise data knowledge.

About Actian Corporation

Data Platform

The Benefits of Cloud Compared to On-Premises

Keith Bolam

July 5, 2022

What are the benefits of cloud versus 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 cloud. New digital-first FinTechs, however, have been much more aggressive in their strategies. In many cases, these businesses would not exist if it were not for the cloud.

Overwhelmingly, we see that businesses operating in the cloud enjoy much greater flexibility, allowing them to compete in a fierce market and adapt to customer demands quickly. Without the shackles of legacy applications and the need to support a slow-changing culture of manual checks and balances, they have expanded quickly. According to Foundry’s Cloud Computing Study 2022, “just 27% of companies in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region currently have most or all of their IT environment in the cloud, compared to 41% globally – but they expect that to double to 53% in the next 18 months.” While APAC still has a way to go, it is positioned well to become a world leader in the cloud.

The companies that have been making investments in cloud, mobile computing, security, and big data are reporting higher growth than those that are predominantly on-premises based. Tech-aware companies and industry leaders are leveraging the advantages of the cloud-computing trend to modernize their operations. A paradigm shift is taking place, from individual investments to collaborative (cloud) investment. Companies are using cloud technology to operate their businesses differently, helping them to identify prospects, improve customer service, and, in turn, generate greater ROI.

Cloud computing is a practical solution for small and large businesses alike. A small business can use as much instantaneous computing power as a large business, which previously would have been impossible if they had to invest in the on-premises hardware and infrastructure.

The Benefits of Cloud

Cloud offers a wide range of benefits for many applications. Take, for example, the strategic use of data. Creating a cloud data platform gives organizations the ability to store, access, and analyze data without being held back by legacy technologies. Consider what these benefits can unleash when they’re applied to data.

No investment in on-premises hardware – It frees up limited financial CapEx so organizations can innovate and keep up with customers/competitors.
Genuinely highly resilient storage – Theoretically indestructible limitless storage for anything digital enables them to scale projects as needed.
The ability to locate compute near the point of consumption – While on-premises solutions tend to be in a limited number of data centers, cloud’s dispersed resources help users operate with more agility.
Robust security – Once thought of as risky, cloud security now provides as good or significantly better protection than on-premises security.
The option to pay as you go – Rather than pay a flat fee, organizations can scale usage and payments up and down seamlessly, avoiding unnecessary costs.

Taken together, all these benefits have enabled organizations to take advantage of the data revolution. Cloud data platforms give them the ability to process data quickly, scale their data usage as necessary, simplify their budgets and conduct deeper analyses of a wide range of data stores. The cloud paradigm shift has taken place – and it’s exerting its impact on the world of data.

About Keith Bolam

Keith Bolam is a veteran Data-Oli-gist at Actian, with nearly 40 years of hands-on experience in databases and operating systems. Since 1985, Keith has specialized in Data Application and Hierarchical Database design, focusing on Ingres technology and the x100 capability. He's guided teams through complex DB deployments, often presenting to user groups on data performance tuning. His Actian blog posts highlight best practices in database optimization and legacy system modernization. Check out his articles for deep dives into Ingres enhancements.

Data Management

Is Big Data Useful to Anyone? Does it Have Intrinsic Value?

Keith Bolam

July 1, 2022

Digital waves and binary code for big data

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 meaningful value from this project.

Big data, especially open data, has huge potential. Many businesses hold the same data – that is, data gathered from open-data sites – and combine it with their own data to find something unique. Being able to determine which way each of the elements in this data interact, and which way you can use it to determine a repeatable outcome, is the key to the Eureka moment.

The potential business inspiration can provide can only be attained if you know the why’s and where’s of what you are collecting. Just collecting data, often very repetitive data, will not help generate that insight.

Is Big Data Popular?

While virtually all growing companies today rely heavily on data, all data is not made equal.

Not all data can be joined to other data to make a relevant insight turn into a business decision. For example, you’re likely aware that supermarkets provide loyalty cards. Why? These cards allow them to hold details of where customers regularly shop and what they buy. The money-back offers those supermarkets extend to customers for providing that data could be seen as goodwill gestures, but they really serve as incentives to keep on using that loyalty card.

So is big data popular? It certainly is in the retail industry, at least by vendors. Perhaps customers that realize they are part of a bigger picture and accept the same loyalty or credit card on face value are also happy. There are, however, many people who do not consider “loyalty cards” fundamental drivers of big data generation. Some don’t see them as good ideas at all. If the data that is generated is not properly used, it has no benefit. Storing data for a long time and hoping it will be useful can make the idea unpopular. Most businesses now know the data they collect holds value – and pulling that value out at an industrial scale is becoming easier and less costly as cloud computing and storage have continued to evolve. More businesses are taking to that challenge every week.

Does that big data store have more than just a finite role of growing a business? Can it hold deeper meaning?

Exposing the Value of Big Data

Starting the exploratory big data journey means you are considering gathering a data set that is bigger than you have dealt with previously. Every business has a different threshold of what that is. A mom-and-pop store may be bringing up all of their customers’ orders into a single dataset – reloading, as is possible today, 25+ years of data from many backup sources. A new system with one terabyte of storage can seem intimidating. But by using today’s ingestion ETL/ELT tools, getting the data in and adding current data can be achieved.

The same principle applies to mid-size and large organizations. A company of 1,000 employees may embrace digital transformation, moving away from traditional on-premises data to a cloud-based system. But the key decision the company faces is not how to get 25 years of archives onto one storage server, but rather how to embody all of its current data centers into a cloud-based environment.

Why do companies move to the cloud? What is the driving force? Perhaps they have, from the data already analyzed, determined that growth for them will require greater flexibility than they can generate using their existing infrastructures. The power of modelling, insights from big data, more growth with less aging infrastructure, and the retraining of staff: these can also be seen as the positive actions of a company that is moving forward and marking itself as a place to work where best practice and delivery of high ROI is paramount.

So, how can companies ensure they are getting the most value from their big data projects?

Step 1: Hold the First Insight Meeting

What should companies want to know that they don’t already know? For one thing, is the business in good health? Many times this question is one we assume is a known quantity. However, that preconceived idea can be tested. Every business in this world faces or has faced some type of dilemma, but the key to understanding if it is a pending crisis or a beneficial inflection is big data and the analytics that comes with it. Without the analytics and deep discovery modelling, the data itself will not help.

Step 2: Mentor Your Data Engineers

Most owners of big data do not have the skills to understand the data, nor do they need them. Management’s key role relating to industry growth is acquiring the people with the right skills. This may be direct employment, a contractor/consultant or a service provided by a specialist company.

Big data empowers the business, but only if the right people are in place to analyze the data. Gathering the data and analyzing it should deliver benefits, ultimately helping businesses avoid a large crisis by predicting any pending declines.

Step 3: Conduct a Strategic Trend Analysis

Knowing the market and the current and prospective customer base can bring early benefits. Early benefits translate, when acted upon in a timely fashion, to greater turnover. And from that, greater profits come. Predicting the next trend in the market is likely to be a hybrid solution based on modelling, analytics and incorporation of the current social and environment semantics.

If a company fails to attract its target customer or misjudges the tremor of existing customers leaving, then all of the goodwill built up will drain away. All the big data the company has collected is worth nothing unless it is put to use. Keeping updated is of utmost important for businesses to stay alive and, with the right wind in their sails, move to a leading position in their chosen fields.

Big data projects may feel overwhelming when you start, but with careful planning and the adoption of tools that fit your business needs, you can overcome the challenges and take advantage of the insights data can provide.

About Keith Bolam

Actian Life

Introducing Actian in Action

Rae Coffman-Bueb

June 29, 2022

Promoting better mental and physical health for all employees, year-round

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25% in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our leadership team has navigated the pandemic with kindness and understanding, offering staff the time off they need to rest and rejuvenate, while also putting programs in place to empower employees to focus on their mental and physical health.

That’s why in May, we introduced Actian in Action as part of our broader Mental Health Awareness Month initiative. As an organization that, like many, has gone remote in the past couple of years, we designed this year’s program with some friendly employee competition in mind with our virtual 5K and Wellness Week initiatives.

From May 7 through May 15, employees participated in an assortment of challenges and activities – from group fitness classes to live cooking demos and more – to win a variety of prizes, including the grand prize, a new Peloton Bike.

“Wellness Week is a reminder to us all that our colleagues matter,” said Keith Bolam, our UK-based director of strategic initiatives, who participated in our Actian in Action Wellness Week challenge. “Teamwork can benefit everyone in different ways. Whether your presence explicitly or implicitly helps others, by just being there, you can achieve great things together.”

Actian’s virtual 5K event was also held over the course of Wellness Week, with employees encouraged to walk, run or bike and complete the race at their own pace. Those who registered received a race tee, hydration reminder water bottle and fitness tracker to help them meet their goals.

Kerstin Hansen, our senior analyst of order management who lives in Hamburg, Germany, shared, “I always try being active; I go out for a walk or run 2-3 times a week, and also get to the office by bike (total round-trip distance of 30km) twice a week. But participating in the Actian Virtual 5K motivated me so much more to go out and run or do a bike ride. This was a great activity!”

“Since beginning to run initially for weight loss purposes, it quickly became clear to me that I was reaping the rewards of not only the physical benefits, but the mental/wellbeing benefits as well – which was a total surprise to me,” shared Matthew Rendell, our senior manager of technical course development in the UK. “In the utter madness of the world/life as it is today, running provides me with a special place called ‘my space’. In ‘my space’ I figure stuff out – home stuff, work stuff, life stuff – whatever stuff. I put all my ducks back in alignment and prepare myself for the day ahead. Each day I pull on my running gear, lace up my trainers and I go to ‘my space’ – no one else there, no music in my ears – only me, the birds and all of nature around me. It’s the best place to unpick the challenges of life and be ready to tackle them in a calm and considered manner.”

Alongside our recently launched IMPACTIAN program, we’re thrilled to provide opportunities to our employees that meet their needs both personally and professionally that help make them – and Actian – a great place to work. We’re already planning our next wellness activity, so keep an eye out for more information to come!

Are you ready to make an impact on the world and change the face of data management and integration? Join our team of enthusiastic, talented minds in a diverse, collaborative environment where you can thrive and grow. Learn more about our career openings at https://www.actian.com/company/careers/.

About Rae Coffman-Bueb

Rae Coffman-Bueb is Director of Employee Experience at Actian, dedicated to enhancing organizational culture. With a background in People Operations, Rae has implemented global best practices that empower teams and streamline HR processes. She provides guidance on talent development, onboarding, and cross-functional collaboration. Rae's blog posts focus on employee engagement, internal communications, and HR innovations. Check them out for tips on boosting workplace satisfaction.

Introducing Our Actian 2022 Interns!

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Is Big Data Useful to Anyone? Does it Have Intrinsic Value?

Is Big Data Popular?

Exposing the Value of Big Data

Step 1: Hold the First Insight Meeting

Step 2: Mentor Your Data Engineers

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