Why Analyst Reports Matter: Actian Leads the Way in Data Management

In a world where data-driven decisions define success and determine business outcomes, organizations often turn to industry technology analysts for trusted insights when choosing technology. Analyst reports provide a clear picture of emerging trends, competitive landscapes, and the vendors setting the pace.

These insights help businesses across all industries navigate complex markets, make informed IT investments, and strategically align their technology choices with both short- and long-term goals. By leveraging the research and expertise of analysts, companies gain the confidence needed to select the right platform and approach to drive innovation.

Recent analyst reports–several of which highlight Actian products–show how leading technologies play a pivotal role in managing and leveraging data throughout an organization. Here’s why business and IT leaders should pay attention to these reports and why Actian capabilities matter to modern companies.

Enabling Trusted Data Management Across All Environments

Actian has solidified its position as a key player in data management, earning recognition as an Honorable Mention vendor in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Data Management Systems. We are also included in the Forrester Data Management for Analytics Platforms Landscape, 2024. In addition, Actian was named an Innovative provider in ISG Buyers Guide™ for Data Products. These acknowledgments underscore Actian’s leadership in providing comprehensive data management products.

Why managing data matters. Effective data management–from improving data accuracy to integrating disparate sources and enabling actionable insights–is the backbone of modern business success. With the growing reliance on cloud environments, businesses must ensure their data is secure, accessible, and optimized for decision-making. The cloud offers unparalleled scalability and flexibility, but without robust data management, companies risk inefficiencies, compliance challenges, and missed opportunities.

Whether operating in cloud-first, hybrid, or on-premises settings, organizations must have the ability to manage trusted data efficiently. Actian understands that customers have data spread across multiple environments and can help them with their data no matter where it resides.

Supporting a Range of Workloads With Translytical Data Platforms

Forrester defines translytical data platforms as next-generation data solutions built on a single database engine to support transactional, operational, and analytical workloads without impacting data integrity, performance, or real-time analytics. This trend is critical as businesses strive to unlock real-time insights for various workloads. Actian’s inclusion as a Contender in the Forrester Wave™: Translytical Data Platforms, Q4 2024, reflects our leading capabilities to unify transactional and analytical workloads.

Forrester notes platform strengths and offers recommendations for organizations considering implementation:

• Accelerate use cases through advanced self-service and automation. Look for vendors that provide a multi-persona user interface to facilitate collaboration, automate all translytical functions, offer translytical solutions as a service, and incorporate automation for tiered storage.
• Enhance data management capabilities to support a wide range of use cases. Look for comprehensive data management support for data integration, curation, vector search, large language model integration, processing, transformation, security, metadata management, and connectivity to diverse data repositories.
• Enable distributed processing and transactions across diverse data and clouds. Look for a platform that can leverage external data sources while ensuring consistency, such as databases, lakehouses, software as a service, devices, and marketplaces in data processing and transactions across hybrid and multiple clouds.

Why handling multiple workloads matters. Businesses require data platforms that keep up with the demand for real-time insights and operational efficiency. Translytical data platforms are emerging as a modern solution to drive faster insights, reduce complexity, and ensure data integrity. They enable businesses to streamline operations. By performing both transactional and analytical workloads, they allow businesses to streamline operations and support real-time decision-making without the need for separate systems.

Optimizing Industry-Leading Data Platform Software

The 2024 Data Platforms Buyers Guide from Ventana Research/ISG Research offers a comprehensive evaluation of 25 data platform providers, assessing their ability to meet buyers’ diverse needs. Actian’s designation as Exemplary highlights our commitment to delivering a platform that excels in functionality, innovation, and value.

Actian performed exceptionally well in the Manageability category, which evaluates how well products can be managed technologically and by business users, among other criteria. Actian was ranked as a Leader in the category.

With the ability to support both operational and analytic workloads, the Actian platform meets organizations’ need to perform a variety of use cases, including those involving GenAI. As ISG notes, “We assert that through 2027, the development of intelligent applications providing personalized experiences driven by GenAI will increase demand for data platforms capable of supporting hybrid operational and analytic processing.”

With capabilities spanning data integration, quality, and usability, the Actian Data Platform equips businesses to address complex data challenges and capitalize on growth opportunities. The recognition from ISG Research validates Actian’s industry leadership and ability to empower organizations with reliable, high-performing data platform software.

Why understanding the data platform landscape matters. Understanding the data platform ecosystem is crucial for businesses that want to stay competitive. With the right data platform, organizations can unify disparate data sources, improve data governance, and drive actionable insights. Staying informed about the capabilities of top providers helps businesses make strategic investments, ensuring their chosen platform aligns with both current and future needs. By leveraging insights from evaluations like analysts’ buyers guides, companies can confidently select solutions that optimize performance and support their ongoing needs.

Ensuring Data Quality for Diverse Use Cases

Data quality is the foundation of data-driven decision-making and operational excellence. Actian’s recognition as Exemplary in ISG Research’s 2024 Data Quality Buyers Guide reflects our platform’s ability to address business needs with robust data validation, cleansing, and enrichment capabilities. Whether ensuring accurate reporting, improving customer experiences, or supporting GenAI use cases, the Actian platform enables organizations to confidently optimize their data across a variety of use cases.

As ISG noted in its report, data quality is increasingly important for modern tools, such as those supporting machine learning. “Although data quality software has historically provided users with an environment to check and correct data quality issues manually, the use of machine learning (ML) to automate the monitoring of data is being integrated into data quality tools and platforms to ensure that data is complete, valid, and consistent as well as relevant and free from duplication.”

Why data quality matters for analysts and business users. Data quality directly impacts outcomes, including accurate analytics, reliable forecasting, and sound decision-making, reducing the risk of costly mistakes. Poor data quality, on the other hand, leads to inefficiencies, mistrust, and missed opportunities. For data analysts, data quality can be the difference between actionable insights and misleading conclusions, while for business users, it ensures processes run smoothly and decisions deliver value.

Making Data Integration Easy—No IT Skills Required

For data to reach its full potential, it must be integrated on a single platform, then made available to everyone who needs it. As data becomes available from more sources than ever before, connecting data can be tricky. It requires scalability and the ability to integrate systems, applications, and data sources. Requiring IT or specialized skill sets for integration creates bottlenecks and slows down insights.

Actian’s data integration capabilities stand out for their user-friendly design, enabling organizations to connect, transform, and manage data without requiring advanced IT skills. That’s why Actian was recognized as Exemplary in ISG Research’s 2024 Data Integration Buyers Guide. Our platform delivers tools that empower users to take control of their data integration processes. Intuitive interfaces and powerful automation simplify complex workflows, helping businesses unlock insights faster and more efficiently.

Data integration is playing an important role in data intelligence, serving as a critical layer in the tech stack. Data integration is enabling enterprises to extract data from applications, databases, and other sources and combine it for analysis in a data warehouse or data lakehouse with the intention of generating business insights, according to ISG Research. “Without data integration, business data would be trapped in the applications and systems in which it was generated.”

Why simplifying data integration matters. Bringing together data is crucial for organizations striving to keep pace with the rapidly increasing volume and complexity of data. When integration is made easy, teams across the organization benefit by accessing and using data without limitations, fostering innovation and improving collaboration. By reducing the technical barriers to integration, businesses can focus on leveraging their data to create value, improve operations, and respond quickly to market demands.

Proven Value Backed by Analyst Reports

In this era when data is the currency of innovation, organizations must implement industry-recognized technologies that deliver tangible results. Analyst reports serve as guideposts for navigating data products and features. They offer independent validation of vendors’ capabilities and provide a framework for assessing which solutions align with an organization’s specific goals. For businesses evaluating data platforms, these reports help differentiate between hype and genuine leadership.

Actian’s recognition in multiple analyst reports—including those from Gartner, Forrester, and ISG Research—highlights our ability to deliver measurable value across data manageability, quality, and integration, among other benefits. You can read more about our offerings in the IDC Vendor Profile and the Bloor Research InBrief. These accolades reflect not just market trends but the real-world impact of Actian’s product suite.

Now, with the integration of Zeenea, we have added even more capabilities to optimize data, such as metadata management and data discovery. As organizations grapple with disparate data sources, our ever-expanding range of capabilities enable seamless discovery, understanding, and utilization of data. Have questions about our products? Connect with one of our experts.

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.