Data Integration

What is a Data Hub and Why Should You Care?

Actian Corporation

October 7, 2019

If you are still using point-to-point integrations to move data through your IT environment, then you are spending too much money and missing the opportunities a modern data can provide. A data hub is a centralized service that connects all of your IT systems, whether they be Web applications, IoT devices, SaaS solutions, or core business platforms, such as CRM or ERP that manages the connections to each of the systems and orchestrates the data flow amongst them.

Gartner provides an interesting perspective on what a data hub is- “This is not a technology, but an approach to more effectively determine where, when and for whom data needs to be mediated, shared and then linked and/or persisted. A data hub is a logical architecture that enables data sharing by connecting producers of data (applications, processes, and teams) with consumers of data (other applications, processes, and teams). Endpoints interact, provisioning data into it or receiving data from it, and the hub provides a point of mediation and governance and visibility to how data is flowing across the enterprise.”

Data Hubs Enable Efficiency, Scale, and Agility

Data hubs let you avoid all these headaches and focus on building the technology-enabled business processes that your operations and users need. With a hub, connections are established to each system or component you want to integrate, and that connection is shared with all the other systems that must interact with it. Data services can be exposed and published consistently, enabling better integration of data across systems and reducing the need for data replication to support cross-system business processes. If a credential must be updated, then it occurs within the hub, and all the subscribing applications can continue using the connection. Data hubs also simplify the data governance requirements as the data is persisted at a central location. Data can be transformed and distributed to other endpoints easily, such as cloud data warehouses and analytics BI engines.

Though data hub is defined in this context simply a conceptual, logical or physical node in which mediation (i.e., governance policy reconciliation) is achieved through sharing, linking, storing and exchanging semantically consistent data, it remains very confusing to many companies. This is mostly due to vendors who use the term “hub” to mean warehouse. A hub does not imply a central physical repository. A hub is like a transit station on a rail network; it is not a place where all passengers converge; a hub is a small component, part of the infrastructure; it is not an endpoint like a data warehouse or data lake.

Third-Party Components are Essential Parts of Your IT Environment

In many modern organizations, technology (application) components are becoming disposable commodities – entering and exiting the environment with little planning or assessment of the impact. Third-party components are becoming a mainstay for supporting business operations. IT staff are challenged to implement them quickly, integrate them into enterprise data models and ensure the frictionless flow of information while simultaneously maintaining data security and integrity. Data hubs excel at the third-party integration challenge. They enable third-party apps to be integrated (both at the data and workflow levels), yet controlled in terms of data access and retention policies.

Don’t Wait, Implement a Data Hub Today

Data hubs have been in the IT industry for many years. It is only recently, however, with the rapid adoption of cloud services and companies facing hybrid data challenges (data split across cloud and on-premises environments), that hub solutions have become essential parts of the IT operating fabric. If your company does not yet have a hub solution or you are still struggling with legacy point-to-point integrations, then Actian can help. Actian DataConnect provides you with a hybrid integration-platform-as-a-service (IPaaS), so you can implement your hub solution quickly and accelerate value back to your organization.

To learn more, visit DataConnect.

About Actian Corporation

Actian empowers enterprises to confidently manage and govern data at scale, streamlining complex data environments and accelerating the delivery of AI-ready data. The Actian data intelligence approach combines data discovery, metadata management, and federated governance to enable smarter data usage and enhance compliance. With intuitive self-service capabilities, business and technical users can find, understand, and trust data assets across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. Actian delivers flexible data management solutions to 42 million users at Fortune 100 companies and other enterprises worldwide, while maintaining a 95% customer satisfaction score.

Data Management

Your Dreams are our Dreams

Alex Hanshaw

October 3, 2019

I recently had the privilege of presenting at Insight Technology’s db tech showcase in Tokyo.

The night before my presentation my colleagues and I had been invited to a meal with one of our partners. At the end of the meal, one of my colleagues was thanking our hosts for a wonderful meal and in flawless Japanese went on to say, “Your dreams are our dreams”.

I joined the Actian team as a sustaining software engineer. As such, helping our customers has always been central to my work. Every bug fix not only helped the customer who had reported a problem but also every customer who received a patch containing my solutions. Working on a bug has become a rare treat now that I am running both Engineering and Sustaining teams for several products. However, I do still get to put our customers’ needs front and center when building roadmaps and deciding which features to add to my products.

The phrase “Your dreams are our dreams” neatly encapsulated my principles and the ethos of the wider Actian team. The central message of my presentation was that it is important to choose a vendor based on the way they treat you. A good vendor will treat your dreams as their own and provide the technology and features you need to succeed.

With the introduction of GDPR our customers have become increasingly security conscious. Actian Ingres already provides a host of features to enable GDPR-compliant applications including SQL functions to allow data to be encrypted and decrypted. However, the initial implementation did not provide for the use of initialization vectors. An initialization vector, or starting variable, is a fixed-sized input to a cryptographic primitive that avoids repetition during the data encryption process, making it impossible for hackers who use dictionary attacks to decrypt the exchanged encrypted message by discovering a pattern.

The Clinical Trials Service Unit (CTSU) at Oxford University deals with the collection and analysis of data that pertains to the causes, prevention and treatment of chronic illnesses such as cancer, stroke, and heart disease. The security of this sensitive data is a high priority. When CTSU asked us to enhance our existing encryption and decryption functions to include the use of initialization vectors, we could see the importance of their request. Engineers were immediately assigned to the task because our customer’s problem is our problem. The work on the enhanced SQL functions is nearly complete and will allow CTSU to achieve the higher level of security that they research requires. Their work, their dream is to save lives. Their dream is our dream.

About Alex Hanshaw

Alex Hanshaw is Director of Engineering at Actian, drawing on 20+ years of hands-on experience developing solutions for complex customer challenges. Alex joined the Ingres Sustaining Engineering team in 1997 and has continually prioritized resolving customer issues across Actian Ingres and Vector. He has overseen multiple product enhancements that reduce downtime and simplify maintenance. Alex frequently collaborates with industry peers at conferences and user groups (e.g., Ingres Community meetups) to share best practices. On the Actian blog, Alex covers topics such as database migration strategies, performance optimization, and troubleshooting. Check out his recent posts for actionable tips on keeping your data systems running smoothly.

Data Intelligence

How Does Data Visualization Bring Value to an Organization?

Actian Corporation

October 1, 2019

Data Visualization Definition

Data visualization is defined as a graphical representation of data. It is used to help people understand the context and significance of their information by showing patterns, trends, and correlations that may be difficult to interpret in plain text form.

These visual representations can be in the form of graphs, pie charts, heat maps, sparklines, and much more.

What are the Advantages of Data Visualization?

In BI, or Business Intelligence, data visualization is already a must-have feature. With the emergence of Big Data, data visualization is becoming even more critical to help data citizens make sense of the millions of data points being generated every day. Not only does it help data citizens curate their data into an easy-to-understand visual representation, but it also allows employees to save time and work more efficiently.

In a way, data visualization also allows organizations to democratize data for everyone within an organization. With this, Data Leaders like Chief Data Officers see in this discipline a way to replace intuition-based decision-making with data analysis. Thus, they are able to evangelize a data-driven culture within their enterprises.

How Can You Get More Value From Modern Data Visualization Platforms?

Most organizations that adopt data visualization tools struggle to visually represent their data in a way that maximizes data value. However, modern data visualization tools are expanding to include new use cases. These tools enable enterprises to find and communicate opportunities for important data analysis. Their strengths are:

Better Communication and Understanding of Data

Data visualization allows employees, even those agnostic to data, to understand, analyze, and communicate on data with new more interactive formats. This corporate will to become data-driven leads them to better inform and train their organizations to understand how to use data visualization tools and their relevant formats. These formats can be heat maps, bubble charts, tree maps, waterfall charts, etc.

More Interactions on Data Analysis

Reporting data is becoming more collaborative in organizations and presenting data a daily activity. Thus, data visualization is becoming more “responsive” allowing it to adapt to any device and any place the data is being shared. These tools open up to web and mobile techniques to share data stories and explore data collaboratively. Moreover, it’s large-format screens that create a more general understanding of the data in management meetings, for instance.

Supporting Data Storytelling

Data storytelling is about communicating findings rather than monitor or analyze their progress. Companies such as Data Telling and Nugit specialize in this. With the use of infographics, data visualization platforms can support data storytelling techniques in communicating the meaning of the data to the management teams. These kinds of representations grab people’s attention and better help them recall the information later.

An Automatic Data Visualization

Data users are increasingly expecting their analytic software to do more for them. Augmented data visualization is very useful, where people are not sure which visual format is best-suited for the dataset they want to explore or analyze. These automatic features are best made for citizen data scientists, whose time will be spent on analyzing data and finding new use-cases rather than visualizing them.

Gartner’s Top Analytics & BI Platforms

According to Gartner, the analytics and business intelligence platform leaders are:

microsoft bi

- Microsoft: Power BI by Microsoft is a customizable data visualization toolset that gives you a complete view of your business. It allows employees to collaborate and share reports inside and outside their organization and spot trends as they happen. Click for more information.

- Tableau: Tableau helps people transform data into actionable insights. They allow users to explore with limitless visual analytics, build dashboards, perform ad hoc analyses, and more. Find out more about Tableau.

- Qlik: With Qlik, users are able to create smart visualizations, and drag and drop to build rich analytics apps accelerated by suggestions and automation from AI. Read more about Qlik.

thoughtspot data visualization

- ThoughtSpot: ThoughtSpot allows user to get granular insights from billions of rows of data.With AI technology, uncover insights from questions you might not have thought to ask. Click for more information on ThoughtSpot

In Conclusion: Why Should Enterprises use Data Visualization?

The main reasons that data visualization is important to enterprises, among others, are:

Data is easier to understand and remember.
Visualizing data trends and relationships is quicker.
Users are able to discovery data that they couldn’t have seen before.
Data leaders can make better, data-driven decisions.

About Actian Corporation

Data Analytics

Actian Datacast: The Future is Hybrid

Emma McGrattan

September 30, 2019

This is the fourth and final installment of an in-depth blog series examining the findings of the recent Actian Datacast 2019: Hybrid Data Trends Snapshot. The survey (which polled 303 IT professionals with influence or decision-making ability at companies of 250+ employees) identified four key trends that were illustrated in the Datacast Infographic.

Our weekly blog series has explored each of these trends in greater detail. You can find the complete blog series by visiting Data @ Work, the official Actian blog.

Hybrid Environments

In the prior three blogs from this series, we looked at i) maximizing the value of available data, ii) leveraging the right data for the right decision-making, and iii) identified key challenges to the adoption of cloud data warehouse solutions. This week, we’ll look at the growing movement toward hybrid data environments.

There’s no doubt that companies that leverage more of the data, and more of the data sources that they generate, for analytics and insights achieve superior business outcomes and outpace competitors. A hybrid, multi-cloud approach enables enterprises to structure their data architecture to fit how their business works.

The public cloud provides elasticity and scale, employing multiple cloud platforms provides resilience and choice, and on-premises deployment provides for control and privacy for sensitive data. Legacy data warehouses and first-generation cloud data warehouses have enabled only one platform choice – their own.

And even having multiple clouds available without an on-premises option, is not enough.

According to the Actian Datacast, 87% of IT Decision-Makers (ITDMs) Agree that When it Comes to Their Data Analytics, They Want a Hybrid Solution with Both Cloud and On-Premises Deployment.

Whether they’re still running analytics on appliances like Netezza or Teradata, or if they are wholly in one of the public clouds, every enterprise is starting from somewhere as they consider the needs of the future.

Hybrid and multi-cloud is the only arrangement that gives enterprises the flexibility they need to “play their data where it lies”, and to leverage the elasticity, scale and connectedness of the cloud.

Most ITDMs would prefer a hybrid environment over their current solutions, but what exactly does that look like?

When it comes to their ideal approach for computing and data analytics, over two in five ITDMs (44%) want on-premises and multiple clouds, one-quarter (26%) want on-premises and single cloud, over one in ten (14%) want multiple clouds only, one in ten (9%) want on-premises only and less than one in ten (7%) want single cloud only.

While There Are Many Options Available, the Priority for ITDMs is Clear: 95% Say Having Freedom of Choice to Obtain Best-in-Class Data Analytics Solutions is Very Important to Them.

Over four out of five ITDMs (83%) specify that they do not want to get locked into a single cloud platform. It’s clear that single-platform, on-premises solutions are in the rearview and hybrid solutions are the way of the future.

83% of IT Decision-Makers Said They Don’t Want to Be Locked-in to a Single Cloud

Hybrid environments are clearly gaining popularity, but what are some of the potential obstacles ITDMs should be aware of? The three biggest challenges that ITDMs told us apply to transitioning to hybrid solutions are cost (42%), management of competing priorities and/or visions (41%), and the inability to get users to adopt new technologies and capabilities quickly (41%).

These obstacles are by no means insurmountable, but IT teams need to be able to argue for the better outcomes that hybrid provides, combined with a confident view of the economic implications.

Data Governance and Compliance Needs

The power to play your data wherever it lies is critical to unleashing enterprise-wide analytics, but increasingly IT teams are making choices because of regulatory and compliance requirements.

Governments around the world are becoming more active and more prescriptive in establishing laws that determine how businesses may use and possess personal data. GDPR in Europe has compelled massive change in enterprise data architectures and protocols.

In the US, a number of states already have their own individual data legislation, and there is an ever-growing number of rules that businesses have to bear in mind. Compliance for global enterprises has never been more complicated. It is critical that modern data warehouse solutions make globally-compliant data management easier, not harder.

Hybrid deployment is a fundamental requirement of such systems.

Hybrid architecture (both in data warehouses and application databases) will allow a compliance-minded enterprise to locate their data wherever compliance requirements demand, without sacrificing analytics performance or cost considerations.

About Emma McGrattan

Emma McGrattan is CTO at Actian, leading global R&D in high-performance analytics, data management, and integration. With over two decades at Actian, Emma holds multiple patents in data technologies and has been instrumental in driving innovation for mission-critical applications. She is a recognized authority, frequently speaking at industry conferences like Strata Data, and she's published technical papers on modern analytics. In her Actian blog posts, Emma tackles performance optimization, hybrid cloud architectures, and advanced analytics strategies. Explore her top articles to unlock data-driven success.

Events

Observations From Strata Data Conference

Emma McGrattan

September 26, 2019

Looking around at Strata this morning I observed that the folks here fall into three broad categories:

Strata Data Conference

The t-shirt-wearing techie who proudly wears their favorite logo’ed t-shirt e.g. “Data is the New Bacon” and who is here to reassure themselves that there isn’t much that they don’t know about what is happening in the data ecosystem.
Then there’s the golf-shirt-wearing tech professional. They either have booth duty later, or they’re here on a mission to find a solution to a data problem at their company.
And finally there’s the jacket/ blazer wearing corporate executive. They’re here to make sure that their buzzword vocabulary is updated and to validate that their multi-year data strategy still makes sense.

I haven’t seen any Patagonia vest-wearing VC’s yet, which is interesting.

I’m wearing a t-shirt and a jacket today because I need to have credibility across all three groups.

In Actian we have some of the coolest tech in data analytics and I can geek it up with the best of them. Those looking to solve concurrency, performance or hybrid deployment problems will appreciate how Actian Data Platform was architected for exactly these challenges. The business decision-maker will wonder why he’s never heard of us before when we offer exactly what his business needs.

Strata Data Conference

If you’re at StrataData, stop by Actian booth 1141 today to learn more about Actian and what it could mean for you.

Catch Paul Wolmering in room 1A04/05 at 1:15 PM to hear more about “Next-generation Serverless Data Architecture for Insights at the Speed of Thought.”

About Emma McGrattan

Data Platform

Five Tips for Teradata Migration Success

Actian Corporation

September 19, 2019

If you are like most companies that currently use Teradata appliances, you may be exploring options for a new, modern data warehouse that is a better fit for today’s cloud-centric world. But don’t make the migration journey an afterthought. Teradata is a big, complex system full of rich, unique SQL syntax that predates standardization. And migrations of terabytes of data, thousands of tables and views, specialized code and data types, and other proprietary elements do not happen overnight. Given the dependencies and complexities involved with data warehouse migrations, it’s no wonder that many projects fail to achieve their intended goals.

To ensure a successful migration journey, avoid these common pitfalls:

1. Migrating in One Fell Swoop

Pressure to perform migrations in one fell swoop often arises out of cost constraints and/or performance frustrations with the legacy data warehouse. But think back to how prior modernization projects have gone—whether involving mainframes or any other legacy technical debt—and you can quickly see the high risk of taking on the entire data warehouse at once.

To mitigate risk and realize faster time-to-value, you should consider an incremental approach that would enable you to gradually transition from Teradata while first offloading your most mission-critical workloads in a phased manner—gradually reducing the burden on your legacy system.

2. Mishandling Proprietary Elements

We frequently find Line of Business applications to contain a significant amount of complex logic and represent the most challenging workloads to migrate to a new platform. Customers have often written some of the logic of these systems using stored procedures or user-defined functions, which are the least portable way of building an application.

If your application estate consists of such complex code, your target data warehouse should adhere to SQL, Spark, JDBC/ODBC, and other open standards and have a wealth of partners capable of automatically converting BTEQ scripts, including procedures and macros.

3. Rushing the Business Assessment

A thorough assessment of your legacy Teradata environment is a critically important step to ensuring a successful migration journey. Your company has most likely invested many man-years of logic into your Teradata platform. There will be a lot of junk data that got created over that time. Tables that may not have been touched for years. Countless queries and workloads that are irrelevant to the business. These objects should not be moved during the migration.

You can reduce your migration risk by using an automated tool to analyze the logs from your Teradata data warehouse to gain a complete understanding of your current environment. Based on numerous factors, the tool can identify redundancies that should not be migrated, decide what should, prioritization for migration, and how to work with phased migrations.

4. Being Locked in Without Options

Be sure to select a solution that fully provides the flexibility and capabilities your organization requires both today and tomorrow. For instance, do you want to move all at once to the cloud as part of a cloud-first strategy, or conduct your migration in phased stages? Businesses with rigorous compliance or privacy demands often prefer to store some data on-premises. Do you want to be locked into a particular cloud platform, or go with AWS now, but have the option to move some apps to Azure later? Whatever your situation is, don’t trade in your current vendor lock-in for another.

5. Assuming That All Cloud Data Warehouses Are Created Equal

As you consider your options for a new data warehouse, make sure that the solution preserves what you’ve long appreciated about your Teradata systems while overcoming modern challenges. For instance, not all cloud data warehouses are delivered as a fully managed service. Many cloud data warehouses may be inexpensive to get started and the meter may technically run only when service is in use, but you will see a huge monthly sticker shock as you run full production workloads. And performance can often slow as the volume of users increases.

Migrate With Confidence

The Actian Data Platform can help you incrementally migrate or offload from your Teradata data warehouse until it can be retired in a managed fashion—according to your timeframe and your terms. Choose the path that is best for you – cloud, on-premises, or a combination of both, with a seamlessly architected hybrid solution.

To learn more, visit https://www.actian.com/data-platform

About Actian Corporation

Data Analytics

AI Algorithms Become More Sophisticated in Edge Devices

Actian Corporation

September 12, 2019

Artificial Intelligence Algorithms Become More Sophisticated

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems seem to be everywhere and for a good reason. AI represents the next generation of computing capabilities. It is leveraging the speed and scale of cloud computing to deliver not only high-speed automation but also continuous learning and adaptation capabilities that can finally match the pace of change in the natural environment. As AI capabilities and AI algorithms mature, organizations are developing new business, consumer and governmental usage scenarios that are revolutionizing how humans interact with machines.

Autonomous AI Services

The AI evolution is more than capabilities. AI algorithms are also migrating from centralized data centers (both on-premises and in the cloud) to distributed devices on the edge of networks. AI is no longer the “modern equivalent to a mainframe,” instead, it is evolving into a new type of embedded capability in end-user devices and edge computing. This development is important for two reasons:

AI systems are becoming more autonomous. It is not a singular AI system, but, instead, a network of independent AI bots performing tasks and “learning” as separate units.
Distributing AI across the network means better performance for both industrial automation and end-user interactions. Two of the key use cases for AI are natural language processing and image analysis. Performing these operations “in the field” means less traffic on networks and faster response times.

How AI at the Edge is Being Used

Companies use distributed AI algorithms to monitor and optimize real-time operations – receiving inputs from embedded sensors, GPS-enabled mobile applications, IoT devices, and video cameras and aggregating this data into a holistic, digital representation of the physical operations. The AI system then analyzes this digital representation directly or transmits it to the centralized operations staff for interpretation.

Companies are also using AI systems embedded into edge devices as a platform to deploy the next generation of human-interaction technologies. AI is well suited to natural language processing (NLP), translation, and suggesting responses based on the analysis of previous interactions. During the past few years, network latency has been the biggest barrier to AI bots being indistinguishable from human agents. By moving the AI algorithms to edge devices, latency is removed, and seamless machine-to-human interaction can be achieved.

The Need for Persistent Data

It’s great that AI algorithms can operate independently at the edge of the network, but there are a few key reasons these systems must be connected back into a core AI infrastructure.

Shared Learning

Independent AI systems will each learn different content/input at different rates based on the types of experiences and interactions to which they are exposed. However, to provide a consistent, system-wide AI experience, these independent bots must share what they’ve learned with other AI systems and develop a collective knowledge.

Interactions in Motion

Mobile devices, such as cellular phones, connected automobiles, and other moveable devices, facilitate most end-user interactions with AI devices. To maintain a consistent AI interaction while an end-user is in motion (crossing different network access points or cell towers), certain data about the AI interaction must be persisted to a centralized location and shared with other AI bots.

Workflow

Most transactional activities and process-automation workflows enabled by AI will require some interaction with centralized services or other remote devices. Data persistence enables workflow continuity and tracking across multiple systems. AI systems must be tuned to know when they can operate independently and when they must interact with centralized infrastructure services.

Artificial Intelligence is arguably the most important technological development of the modern era. AI systems’ capabilities are becoming more sophisticated and are now being distributed around the globe. As these distributed AI algorithms in edge devices become more sophisticated, persistent data requirements must advance at the same pace to enable the emerging use cases and immersive experiences that the market demands.

Actian’s Zen IT Edge database provides an embeddable, a nano footprint persistent data store for smart devices that are easily connected Actian’s cloud and on-premises analytic databases. You can learn more about Actian Data Platform here.

About Actian Corporation

Data Observability

Actian Datacast: Is it Keeping IT From Cloud Data Warehouse Nirvana?

Actian Corporation

September 11, 2019

Following is the third installment of our in-depth blog series examining the findings of the recent Actian Datacast 2019: Hybrid Data Trends Snapshot. The survey, which polled 303 IT professionals with influence or decision-making ability at their companies of 250+ employees, identified four key trends that were illustrated in the Datacast Infographic. Our weekly blog series explores each of these four trends in greater detail. You can follow along with the blog series by visiting Data at Work, the official Actian blog.

Barriers to Success

In our last two blogs, we looked at how to fully maximize the value of available data and how to leverage the right data for the right decision-making.

This week, we’ll be looking more broadly at the key challenges for IT decision-makers (ITDMs) seeking to adopt cloud data warehouse solutions.

The Actian Datacast found that 57% of ITDMs say they have a lot of data technology, but they don’t believe it’s making any difference to their business. Today’s businesses are no strangers to technology – but is it making a significant impact? Almost three in five ITDMs don’t think so.

Today’s businesses are seeking solutions to effectively and efficiently collect, analyze, manage, and use data. Modern cloud data warehouses offer many enticing benefits for ITDMs. They make it easy to bring analytic powers to data wherever it lives (whether on-prem or in one of the popular cloud platforms), they can handle concurrency at scale, and offer great compute performance and smart, elastic storage utilization.

So what’s preventing businesses from adopting cloud data warehouse solutions?

Cost, speed of deployment, and complexity.

When we dug deeper, we found that 84% of ITDMs would deploy more data warehouse solutions if it took less time and money.

In fact, more than four in five ITDMs say one of the most painful parts of data analytics is how long it takes to deploy.

It’s a complicated path to successful digital transformation and the transition can come with a hefty price tag, but it’s important to keep in mind that the benefits greatly outweigh the costs. The ability to comply with data regulations of the future depends on being able to put your data where you want (on-prem or in the cloud) and to apply the security protocols and internal controls the laws of the future may require.

Data integration solutions can become an important aspect of regulatory compliance, as they make it possible to transfer, transform, and unify data from non-compliant to compliant states.

In addition, more than 50% of those businesses say data complexity issues, due to siloed applications, are a top barrier to entry for accessing data and gaining effective real-time insights.

To address this, businesses need a more cost-effective and flexible approach designed to contend with a brand’s specific data complexity in order to move faster, more confidently, and with less risk.

Over half of ITDMs say speed of deployment and flexibility are very important to them in choosing a cloud and data warehousing service and/or platform, and 89% say they need more flexibility from their data analytics solutions.

Today’s businesses face a variety of difficult challenges and barriers, but we’re in the midst of a shift towards data warehouse modernization and towards hybrid environments.

We believe this will help resolve some of these problems and allow a compliance-minded enterprise to store their data wherever compliance demands, without sacrificing analytics considerations.

Next week, in our final installment of the Actian Datacast blog series, we will delve deeper into hybrid environments as a fundamental requirement to make this a reality.

About Actian Corporation

Data Security

IT and Cyber Security in a Data-Driven Enterprise

Kaz Ali

September 9, 2019

A significant number of employers make the mistake of thinking that only the IT department personnel or security officers are in charge of information security. Any one person from any one department can open the door of opportunity for hackers to gain control of sensitive data or personal information. This is why it is essential that every employee is aware of the company’s security and policies in place and uses them to their fullest.

When in any workplace, IT Security is paramount to everyday life, in and out of the office. Hackers are always on the alert to sneak into a machine/s and find out information about you, your company, your personal life, your bank details, and anything that will help them, we are all targets. You must be alert and prevent the bad guys from hacking into your machine.

Here are a few basic tips everyone should follow on a daily basis:

Only open emails if you know who they are from, the same goes for attachments. If you are unsure, verify the user by calling them and asking. If you are still uncertain, contact your IT department, does the email look legit? Stop, think, take action if you need to.
When you go away from your PC at home or work, lock it and then move away from the PC.
Do not leave your laptop overnight in your car.
Do not give your passwords out to anyone, even IT.
Make sure your computer is up to date with the latest updates and anti-virus is current, too.
Have a strong password and change it regularly, have symbols and numbers in your password, for example – Orange786%$
If you use a lot of systems, do not use the same password for all of them.

The above are just basic tips everyone should follow in the workplace daily. If you are unsure about anything, you should contact your IT department immediately and prevent another hack from happening to you and your company’s assets.

Share company files only with authorized personnel, if someone outside your company asks for them and you are uncertain, follow it up with your manager, if he/she is not getting back to you, contact the IT department.

If you have any notes on your desk that could be sensitive or have confidential information on them, lock them in your drawer.

Do not install unauthorized software on your machine, if you need something installing for the nature of your job, contact your IT department and they will assist.

With a robust security program in place, your company can protect its most sensitive data by ensuring cyber criminals cannot break through the company’s firewall.

Ransomware is also very difficult to protect against. It relies on the user opening an infected link or document to begin its attack. There are, however, ways to reduce the chances of an attack starting. Education is the first line of defense recommended. Do you recognize the email, does it match the senders usual writing style, is the topic of conversation the kind you would normally have with this person and does the link look legitimate? Email is the common distribution method used by criminals!

Every company should provide security awareness training, those are compulsory and very informational. Companies should also test users by sending bogus emails and checking if users actually open them or to see what action they take.

Trust NO one on the Internet, any one person can send you a phishing links and that is all it takes.

Control your social media, you are in charge of it, do not publish company or personal information that can get into the wrong hands and everyone can see. Social media platforms are becoming a massive target for cyber criminals.

If you are on the phone and you are discussing company sensitive data to your manager for example, do it in a private room, do not talk about it in front of the whole office, walk to a meeting room and have the conversation in there.

If you lose your company mobile or laptop or if these get stolen, inform your local IT department immediately, do not wait till the weekend is over, call them even if it happens at the weekend.

Hackers are everywhere, looking to pounce, stay alert, be aware, watch out, don’t let them get into your space and take over!

If you’re interested in the company that wrote this blog, check out Actian!

About Kaz Ali

Kaz Ali serves as Associate Systems Administrator at Actian's UK office. He supports internal systems and network operations, ensuring seamless uptime and efficient workflows. Kaz stays current with systems administration best practices and certifications, sharing insights within Actian's tech community. While not a frequent blogger, Kaz's contributions often focus on IT infrastructure and security. Keep an eye on the Actian blog for future updates on system management tips.

Actian Life

Employee Spotlight: Rob Walsh

Rae Coffman-Bueb

September 6, 2019

Employee Spotlight: Rob Walsh in a blue car

Each month, we will be featuring a different employee in our Employee Spotlight series. This series was born with the belief that your life experiences make you the unique person you are today and influence what you bring to the amazing culture here at Actian. We have chosen to feature those incredible individuals with a blog post dedicated to them.

For this month’s Employee Spotlight, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Rob Walsh, who was recently promoted to VP of IT.

My first trip out to Round Rock, as I was greeting the team, I couldn’t help noticing a flip chart sitting atop Rob’s desk indicating (warning) others of his current mood – chipper. Most recently, it has been stagnating on ‘Fabulous’, which he cleverly added a blue post-it to make it read ‘Absolutely Fabulous’, a reference to one of his favorite British Sitcoms. It is no surprise that with Rob’s sense of humor and personality, he is a staple to the thriving culture in the Round Rock office.

Rob was born in a hospital in Hospital – a quaint town in Ireland. His family moved to Houston, TX, and later moved to South Africa, where he finished school. Initially, Rob set out to be a motor mechanic. This seemed to be a great plan, as he has a love for fast cars and rebuilding motors. But after realizing that he didn’t like being dirty all the time, he found himself moving to Port Elizabeth, South Africa to study Mechanical Engineering. Around 1995, Rob began doing consulting in IT and soon became IT Manager. One of the major appeals was how terribly logical it is and how no two days are the same.

When asked, “What drew you to Actian?”, he casually replied with laughter “Pervasive”. Rob had joined Pervasive Software as the Director of IT Operations in 2007, and in 2013, Pervasive was acquired by Actian. Since then, he has continued to grow in his role and provides Actian with phenomenal support internally, as well as overseeing the public-facing cloud environments.

As a people manager for the better part the past three decades, the most important thing he has learned in his career is, “Take care of your people. You are as good as your people – and that’s all there is to it.” When Rob is not in the office, he still enjoys fast cars and can be found some weekends at Longhorn Racing! We are thrilled to have Rob as part of the Actian family and VP team.

Interested in working at Actian? Check out our open roles and apply today!

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.

Actian Life

Where is the Red Panda?

Actian Corporation

September 5, 2019

Giraffe during Employee Engagement event

It was a lovely Friday morning in San Francisco. The skies were azure blue, the sun was shining, and the nice fresh ocean breeze was blowing, when we all started gathering in an Actian designated area in the center of the San Francisco ZOO. Us – the Actian-ers and our spouses, kids, nieces, nephews and friends. It was our annual company picnic and it was an absolute blast!

The San Francisco ZOO is a 100-acre zoo located in the southwestern corner of San Francisco, between Lake Merced and the Pacific Ocean. As of 2016, the zoo houses more than one thousand individual animals, representing more than 250 species, which we all got to see!

Apart from all the yummy food and the wide variety of drinks, we had so many activities available to make our day a memorable one. A professional caricaturist portrayed our joyful faces; we could have had face paint or a tattoo of any kind done; Chloe, the pig, made kids (and many of the adults) happy as she was walking in our area and was more than delighted to be petted.

We also got free tickets for the carrousel and the ZOO train, which broke before we actually reached the train station but we didn’t really mind. Kids got bribed with an extra ice cream and were ready to run around again and explore.

At one point, it looked like we were all, yet individually, on a single mission. The Red Panda! “Were you able to find the red panda?”, “Have you seen the red panda?”, “I must have missed the red panda!”… While looking for the red panda, we saw a grizzly bear playing with his grizzly mates, penguins being fed, giraffes snacking fresh leaves from the trees, all the cool big cats relaxing in the sun, gorillas and chimpanzees jumping on trees, a koala having an afternoon nap, parrots boasting with bright colored feathers… ostriches, flamingos, insects, kangaroos, suricatas, zebras, wolves… and finally, the Red Panda dossing off, camouflaged in a red-leaved bush!

Employee engagement

It was a beautiful day and we’re really lucky! Actian is a wonderful bunch of people. But having the extended families join the company event shifted the nice company spirit yet to another level.

Thanks, Actian!

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