How the Right Data Platform Approach Unleashes Competitive Advantage

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. The 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 Actian 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. And PredictX, a travel data analytics company, uses Actian to do spend analytics for clients.

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 Jackson is CMO of Actian. Known as JJ, she leads Actian’s global marketing strategy and team. With 25 years of branding and digital marketing experience, she takes a data-driven approach that stems from her background in chemical engineering and as both a user and marketer of data analytics technology. She engages in initiatives to optimize customer experience, transition to a SaaS model and expand the partner ecosystem. JJ previously served as VP of Digital Marketing and Strategy at Teradata, where she led digital, strategy and operations for web modernization and strategy execution.