Year in Review: Actian’s Top 5 Highlights of 2018

2018 was a year of solid growth and progress for Actian, with many announcements and company highlights – including a major acquisition, a proprietary event, product innovations and much more! It was a truly memorable year for us, and as we ramp up in 2019 we wanted to look back with you at some of our most impactful activities and advancements over the last twelve months.

HCL Acquisition

The first half of 2018 started off with a bang when Actian announced it would be acquired by HCL Technologies (HCL), a leading global technology company, and Sumeru Equity Partners (SEP), a technology-focused private equity firm. As part of the HCL Technologies ecosystem, this acquisition and partnership enabled Actian to benefit from HCL’s expertise in delivering next-generation solutions for the cloud, IoT, cybersecurity and autonomics, as well as expand its global reach. This was an important milestone for Actian because it has enabled the company to better serve customers across the globe and accelerate product innovation in the hybrid data arena.

Actian Vector

A number of benchmark reports conducted by McKnight Consulting Group (MCG) Global Services compared Actian Vector to some of its top competitors to measure speed, performance, scalability and agility. In head-to-head comparisons with Cloudera Impala, Snowflake, Amazon Redshift and Microsoft SQL Server, Actian Vector outperformed – demonstrating significant performance advantages over competitors.

Some key takeaways from the benchmarks include:

• Actian Vector is up to 100x faster than Cloudera Impala.
• Actian Vector is up to 20x faster than Snowflake.
• Actian Vector running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) outperforms Amazon Redshift by as much as 12X.
• Actian Vector performs up to nearly 10X faster than Microsoft SQL Server.

In addition to these stellar benchmark reports, we added new features and availability, making Actian Vector Enterprise Edition available on AWS Marketplace and easier than ever for customers to tap into the fastest analytic engine in the cloud – enabling them to extract key insights from big data. In addition, a similar model was released on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace to bring enterprise-class capabilities, security measures and GDPR compliance to analytics in the cloud.

Hybrid Data Conference

Actian’s proprietary event, the Hybrid Data Conference, took place in London on November 1, and welcomed data experts and business leaders from all over the world. Keynote speakers included Kalyan Kumar, CVP & CTO at HCL Technologies, Rick Fitzgerald, EVP & CIO at Equian LLC, and Ian Fox, Head of Media Operations at Manchester United, among many others!

The event was an incredible opportunity for knowledge-sharing among industry leaders – swapping insights and predictions on data management and analytics, hybrid data, operational data warehouses and more. Keep an eye out for updates on 2019 events in the pipeline!

Actian Zen Core Database for Android

In September, Actian debuted the Actian Zen Core database for Android, a part of the Actian Zen Embedded database. The availability on Android revolutionized enterprise development by enabling developers to create more intelligent apps. Actian Zen Core database for Android focuses on the needs of edge and IoT application developers, providing persistent local and distributed data across intelligent applications embedded in smart devices.

The goal of this product is to address the primary pain points and meet the needs of application developers with key benefits including comprehensive data management, portability across a broad spectrum of operating environments (from edge IoT to cloud), accessibility from any program language, and a “set-and-forget” embedded OEM model.

DataConnect

August 2018 ushered in a new version of Actian DataConnect, which was chock full of new features to better support DataConnect users. Key updates include the Orchestration Invoker process design component, hierarchical mapping models and effortless upgrades for existing customers. These updates were critical to the success of the DataConnect community, allowing users to more easily and efficiently complete crucial tasks – like sending or receiving a file via FTP, encrypting or decrypting data, logging document status, posting a RESTful API request and more.

2018 was a busy year for Actian, and we are ramping up for even more product updates, innovations and opportunities in 2019. Thank you to our customers, partners and entire community for a great year, and be sure to check back in with the Actian blog regularly for the latest updates in enterprise data. Happy 2019, Actian community!

About Actian Corporation

Actian makes data easy. We deliver cloud, hybrid, and on-premises data solutions that simplify how people connect, manage, and analyze data. We transform business by enabling customers to make confident, data-driven decisions that accelerate their organization’s growth. Our data platform integrates seamlessly, performs reliably, and delivers at industry-leading speeds.