Winter ’25 Launch: Major Governance Update to Actian Data Marketplace

Actian’s Winter 2025 launch brings a critical upgrade to the Zeenea Enterprise Data Marketplace. 

Self-service data access request
Data teams waste valuable time navigating complex data access processes, with 82% spent on finding and preparing rather than analyzing data. Our new self-service capability streamlines access requests through automated workflows integrated with ServiceNow and Jira, enabling quick, controlled data access while maintaining governance standards.

Why it Matters

The modern enterprise’s relationship with data has reached an inflection point. While organizations have invested heavily in data infrastructure, many struggle to extract value from their data assets. The challenge isn’t just about having data—it’s about making it discoverable, accessible, and trustworthy across the organization—especially for data consumers. 

Last fall we announced a host of new features to help you better understand your data, including the Zeenea Enterprise Data Marketplace that reimagines how organizations discover, access, and leverage their data assets through a consumer-grade experience that feels more like your favorite e-commerce platform than a traditional enterprise tool. Let’s take a closer look. 

Understanding the Enterprise Data Marketplace

The Zeenea Enterprise Data Marketplace is more than just a catalog of available data assets. The Data Marketplace enables intuitive discovery, access, and sharing of data products with federated data governance–a combination of decentralized data ownership with centralized governance.

Decentralized ownership empowers individual business units and domains to manage their data assets directly, as they best understand their specific data needs and contexts. This local control enables faster decision-making, promotes innovation, and allows teams to be more responsive to their unique requirements. For example, a marketing team can manage their campaign data differently than how a finance team handles financial records, each optimizing for their specific use cases.

However, this decentralization needs to be balanced with centralized governance to maintain consistency and control across the enterprise. Centralized governance ensures common standards for data quality, security, and compliance are maintained throughout the organization. It provides the framework within which decentralized teams can operate, much like how a federal government sets broad policies while states maintain local autonomy.

The Rise of Data-as-a-Product

The data-as-a-product approach represents a fundamental shift in how organizations manage and deliver data. Rather than treating data as raw material that requires significant processing before use, data products package data assets with clear documentation, quality metrics, and usage guidelines. This product-centric approach establishes clear contracts between data stewards/producers and consumers, tearing down silos between domains while ensuring strong governance standards.

Why Enterprises Need Data Products and Marketplace

First, it removes technical barriers. Instead of navigating complex data environments or writing queries, data consumers can browse a catalog of ready-to-use data products, much like shopping on an e-commerce platform. The data contract serves as the product description, clearly stating what’s included and what to expect.

Second, it establishes accountability. Large enterprises often struggle with data quality and trust issues. Data contracts create clear lines of responsibility – data producers commit to maintaining certain quality standards, while consumers understand their usage limitations. This accountability is crucial for non-technical users who need to make business decisions based on the data.

Third, it enables self-service. The combination of well-packaged data products and clear contracts means business users can independently find and use data without constantly relying on IT or data teams. This autonomy is particularly valuable in large enterprises where technical resources are often stretched thin.

Finally, it promotes data literacy. By making data more accessible and understandable, this approach helps non-technical users become more confident in working with data. The clear documentation and quality metrics included in data products help users understand what they’re working with, while contracts provide guidelines for proper usage.

The Impact on Large Enterprises

“Managing data access in a large-scale media organization has traditionally been a complex, time-consuming process. With Zeenea’s Self-Service Data Access Request, we expect to reduce related bottlenecks while maintaining strong governance and security protocols”. 
– Mikko Eskola, Chief Data Officer, Sanoma Media Finland

For large enterprises, this approach addresses several critical challenges. It reduces the bottleneck of data requests to technical teams, accelerates decision-making by making data more readily available, and ensures consistent data quality and governance across the organization. Perhaps most importantly, it empowers business users to become more data-driven in their decision-making without requiring them to become technical experts.

As organizations continue to democratize data access, the combination of data products and data contracts provides a structured, scalable way to make data accessible while maintaining quality and governance. It’s a practical solution that bridges the gap between technical capabilities and business needs, making it particularly valuable for large enterprises looking to become more data-driven across all levels of the organization.

Winter 2025 Delivers Even More Value to the Enterprise Data Marketplace

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Actian’s Winter 2025 launch that will reshape how enterprises find and access ready-to-use data assets.

Self-Service Data Access

Remember the last time you had to request access to a dataset? The emails, the tickets, approval processes, and follow-ups. Data teams spend 82% of their time finding and preparing data than analyzing it. Our new self-service data access capability simplifies how data consumers request and receive access to data assets. Through intuitive workflows integrated with existing tools like ServiceNow and Jira, we’re automating the entire process while maintaining strict audit trails for governance and compliance. This feature particularly benefits data consumers who need quick access to trusted data while ensuring data producers and stewards maintain control and visibility by collecting essential information such as intended usage, business use case, and duration.

Try Self-Service Data Access: Administrators must enable and configure the feature in the “Access Requests” section of the Administration interface. Once enabled, data consumers can initiate a request directly in Zeenea Explorer by clicking the “Request Access” button. Data producers can review requests in Zeenea Studio, where they can approve, decline, or request more information. In the Federated Catalog, data access requests are managed at both the tenant and catalog levels.

More Than Just a Data Catalog

At Actian Zeenea, we’re bringing the dynamic, self-service experience we’ve come to expect in our consumer lives into the enterprise data world. While traditional data catalogs focus on documenting what exists, Zeenea’s Enterprise Data Marketplace focusses on what’s possible. We’re not just extracting metadata—we’re creating a dynamic ecosystem where data products can be discovered, understood, and accessed with confidence.

The Future of Data Intelligence

Winter 2025 marks another milestone in our vision to transform how enterprises manage and leverage their data assets. By combining simplified access with robust governance, we’re helping organizations balance the need for data democratization with the requirements for control and compliance. We’re excited to partner with organizations on this journey toward data democratization and look forward to sharing more innovations at our upcoming Spring 2025 launch this May.

Take Action

• Contact us to schedule a demo and see these new features in action
• Download the Enterprise Data Marketplace solution guide
• Try the Zeenea product tour 

About Dee Radh

As Senior Director of Product Marketing, Dee Radh heads product marketing for Actian. Prior to that, she held senior PMM roles at Talend and Formstack. Dee has spent 100% of her career bringing technology products to market. Her expertise lies in developing strategic narratives and differentiated positioning for GTM effectiveness. In addition to a post-graduate diploma from the University of Toronto, Dee has obtained certifications from Pragmatic Institute, Product Marketing Alliance, and Reforge. Dee is based out of Toronto, Canada.