Actian

Last updated

Actian
Company type Subsidiary
Industry
Founded1980;44 years ago (1980)
Headquarters Santa Clara, California
ProductsActian Data Platform
Vector
Ingres
OpenROAD
Zen (PSQL)
NoSQL (Versant)
HCL Informix
DataConnect
DataFlow
Business Xchange
Zeenea Data Discovery Platform
Parent HCLSoftware
Website www.actian.com

Actian [1] is an American software company headquartered in Santa Clara, California that provides analytics-related software, products, and services. The company sells database software and technology, cloud engineered systems, and data integration solutions.

Contents

Timeline

History

Ingres

Ingres was developed at the University of California, Berkeley and commercialized by Relational Technology Inc. After a course of name changes and acquisitions, including VectorWise BV, Versant, Pervasive, and ParAccel, Actian came into existence as a multinational software firm.

Relational Technology, Incorporated (RTI), was founded in 1980 by Michael Stonebraker and Eugene Wong, and professor Lawrence A. Rowe to commercialize Ingres. [3] In the late 1980s, RTI had competition in the database management system (DBMS) market, including Oracle Corporation (which had started with the similar name Relational Software Incorporated), Informix Corporation, and Sybase, but was one of the largest DBMS companies. [4] [5] RTI was renamed Ingres Corporation late in 1989.

ASK Computer Systems announced in September 1990 a deal in which ASK would acquire Ingres, funded partially by investments from Hewlett-Packard and Electronic Data Systems. [6] The deal met resistance from a shareholder, [7] but did complete by November 1990. [8]

Relation to Computer Associates

Computer Associates (CA) acquired the ASK Group in 1994. Despite a loyal customer base, CA failed to develop the technology much further. [9]

Ingres Corporation was spun out of CA as a separate private company in November 2005, with private equity firm Garnett & Helfrich Capital as largest shareholder. Terry Garnett served as interim chief executive, and CA retained a 25% interest. [10] In July 2006, Roger Burkhardt became president. [11] He promoted open source software, and helped form Open Source for America in 2009. [12]

Ingres announced they had acquired the VectorWise technology in 2010, which had spun out from the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI, the Dutch National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science) in 2008. [13] In November 2010, Garnett & Helfrich Capital acquired the last 20% of equity in Ingres Corporation that it did not already own. [14] In July 2011, Steve Shine became chief executive officer. [15]

Actian

In September 2011, Ingres changed its name to Actian, using the marketing phrase "action apps". [16] CEO Steve Shine said the new focus would be on lower-cost sales for its cloud action platform. [17]

In February 2014, Forbes.com listed Actian at #5 in its "Top 10 Big Data Pure-Plays 2014" citing $138 million in Actian revenue for 2013. [18]

In August, 2016, it was reported that Actian had phased out its products promoted for big data, including the former ParAccel, VectorWise, and DataFlow technology. [19] [20] On November 1, 2016, Shine was replaced as chief executive by Rohit De Souza. A new chief financial officer and executive chairman were also appointed. [21]

In April, 2017, several products were renamed, including the combination of Ingres and the former Vector product into one product, Actian X, with new features. [22]

Actian released a product called Avalanche in March 2019 for use on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. [23] In November 2023, Actian rebranded and relaunched Avalanche as Actian Data Platform, including new capabilities for Data Quality. [24]

Lewis Black (previously chief financial officer) took over as CEO in 2020. [25] In January 2023, Marc Potter was named CEO, after serving as Chief Revenue and Operations Officer since 2019. [26]

Acquisitions

VectorWise B.V.

Vectorwise originated from the X100 research project carried out within the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI, the Dutch National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science) between 2003 and 2008. It was spun off as a start-up company in 2008, and acquired by Ingres Corporation in 2011. [27] It was released as a commercial product in June, 2010, [28] [29] [30] initially for 64-bit Linux platform, and later also for Windows.

Versant Corporation

Versant Corporation was an American-based software company building specialized NoSQL data management systems. In late 2012, after rejecting an offer by Unicom Systems, Versant announced it agreed to be acquired by Actian, promoted using the term big data. [31] It closed in December 2012 for an estimated $37 million. [32]

ParAccel, Inc.

ParAccel was a California-based software company that developed a database management system designed to provide advanced analytics for business intelligence. It was acquired by Actian in April 2013. [33] [34] Analysts expected Actian to market ParAccel for larger databases, and VectorWise for moderately sized applications. [35]

Pervasive Software

Pervasive Software was a company that developed software including database management systems and extract, transform and load tools. Pervasive PSQL relational database management system was its primary data storage product.

In December 2003 Pervasive acquired Data Junction Corporation, a privately held company with headquarters also in Austin which produced data and application integration tools renamed Pervasive Data Integrator and later DataConnect, for about US$51.7 million in cash and stock shares. [36] [37]

In 2013, Pervasive Software was acquired by Actian Corporation for $161.9 million, increased from an initial offer of $154 million. [32] [38] [39]

Zeenea

In August 2024, HCLSoftware announced its intent to acquire the French metadata management platform startup Zeenea for €24 million. [40] The acquisition was completed on September 12, 2024, with Zeenea becoming part of Actian's product portfolio. [41]

Products and services

Actian Data Platform

The Actian Data Platform, formerly called Avalanche, is a fully managed Cloud Data Platform for high performance operational analytics available on Google Cloud Platform, [42] Microsoft Azure [43] and AWS. [44]

It offers a fully managed hybrid cloud data warehouse service designed from the ground up to deliver high performance at scale on commodity infrastructure (running on Kubernetes), using Vector as the core database engine (a vectorized, MPP, fully ANSI SQL compliant RDBMS). It also offers native data integration and data quality capabilities, based on an integrated cloud version of Actian DataConnect, and basic data visualization capabilities.

It's marketed as a zero-DBA, Cloud Data Service that can be directly used by business analyst, data engineers, data scientists, or power-users to pull hundreds of terabytes of disparate and diverse data into a single cloud data warehouse, run sub-second queries and advanced analytics and then visualize and report, leveraging most popular tools through easily navigated menus.

Vector

Actian Vector (formerly known as Vectorwise or VectorWise) is an SQL relational database management system designed for high performance in analytical database applications. [45]

Starting from 3.5 release in April 2014, the product name was shortened to "Vector". [46] In June 2014, Actian Vortex was announced - clustered MPP version of Vector, working in Hadoop with storage in HDFS. [47] [48] Actian Vortex was later renamed to Actian Vector in Hadoop. In turn, Actian Vector became the core engine in Actian Avalanche.

Ingres

Ingres is a proprietary SQL relational database management system intended to support large commercial and government applications.

On April 18, 2017, Actian X was introduced as the first natively integrated hybrid database, unifying transactional and analytic processing within a single platform. [49] It integrates features from Ingres and Vector, such as column-based storage, vectorized processing, and multi-core parallelism, supporting diverse workloads for efficient and scalable data management. [50]

In 2024, Actian withdraw the Actian X brand, making all it's features and capabilities available to the Ingres 12.0 release.

OpenROAD

OpenROAD, which stands for "Open Rapid Object Application Development", is a fourth-generation programming language (4GL) and development suite. It includes a suite of development tools, with a built-in IDE (Written in OpenROAD), and Code Repository.

OpenROAD enables the development and deployment of mission-critical, n-tier business applications on Windows and Linux. It connects to databases such as Ingres, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and Zen, and supports additional databases using ODBC.

DataConnect

Actian DataConnect (originally Data Junction), is a versatile data integration platform that enables companies to connect, transform, and manage data across multiple systems and applications. [51]

It supports real-time synchronization, complex transformations, and comprehensive API connectivity, making it ideal for complex enterprise workflows. DataConnect 12.2 was release in August 2023, introducing improved support for Data Quality metrics generation. [52]

DataFlow

Actian DataFlow (originally developed as Pervasive DataRush in the early 2000s) is a high-performance, parallel data processing engine optimized for ETL, data transformation, and analytics. It efficiently manages large datasets with multi-core processing, making it ideal for both individual machines and clusters.

It leverages a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) engine with a Java API and no dependency to MapReduce, thus avoiding it's pitfalls, while enabling efficient parallel processing and reducing memory usage. It integrates with Hadoop environments and supports analytics at scale, making it a powerful tool for enterprise data operations. [53]

Through a partnership with KNIME, DataFlow also enhances data science workflows by enabling seamless integration with KNIME's analytics platform. [54]

Notably, Actian DataFlow is fully independent of Google Cloud Dataflow, built as a proprietary Actian solution unrelated to Apache Beam.

Business Xchange

Actian Business Xchange is a managed B2B integration-as-a-service platform that enables trading partners to exchange electronic procurement and supply chain documents regardless of format or enterprise system. [55]

Zen (PSQL)

Actian Zen (PSQL) (formerly Btrieve, later named Pervasive PSQL until version 13) is an ACID-compliant, Zero-DBA, Embedded, Nano-footprint, Multi-Model, Multi-Platform database management system (DBMS). [56]

Actian NoSQL (Versant)

Actian NoSQL (formerly known as Versant Object Database or VOD) is a high-performance, object database, focused on complex data management with real-time processing capabilities, particularly suited for highly complex object-oriented applications, embedded applications and analytical use cases. [57]

HCL Informix

After it's acquisition by HCL in 2021, Actian received access to the HCL Informix product line, which is a result of an agreement signed between HCL and IBM in 2017. [58] HCL Informix is a multi-model database management system, with a modular architecture, enabling it be used for enterprise applications or embedded solutions. [59] It's offered in a single edition (feature compatible with IBM Informix Enterprise Edition), through a CPU core-based licensing (subscription).

Zeenea

Zeenea Data Discovery Platform is designed to simplify data discovery and governance within enterprises, offering two key interfaces: [60]

Related Research Articles

Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. In 2023, the company’s seat in Forbes Global 2000 was 80. The company sells database software and cloud computing. Oracle's core application software is a suite of enterprise software products, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, human capital management (HCM) software, customer relationship management (CRM) software, enterprise performance management (EPM) software, Customer Experience Commerce and supply chain management (SCM) software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Object database</span> Type of database management system

An object database or object-oriented database is a database management system in which information is represented in the form of objects as used in object-oriented programming. Object databases are different from relational databases which are table-oriented. A third type, object–relational databases, is a hybrid of both approaches. Object databases have been considered since the early 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Informix</span> Database management software product family

Informix is a product family within IBM's Information Management division that is centered on several relational database management system (RDBMS) and multi-model database offerings. The Informix products were originally developed by Informix Corporation, whose Informix Software subsidiary was acquired by IBM in 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ingres (database)</span> Database software

Ingres Database is a proprietary SQL relational database management system intended to support large commercial and government applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IBM Db2</span> Relational model database server

Db2 is a family of data management products, including database servers, developed by IBM. It initially supported the relational model, but was extended to support object–relational features and non-relational structures like JSON and XML. The brand name was originally styled as DB2 until 2017, when it changed to its present form.

Btrieve is a transactional database software product. It is based on Indexed Sequential Access Method (ISAM), which is a way of storing data for fast retrieval. There have been several versions of the product for DOS, Linux, older versions of Microsoft Windows, 32-bit IBM OS/2 and for Novell NetWare.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HCLTech</span> Indian multinational technology company

HCL Technologies Limited is an Indian multinational information technology (IT) consulting company headquartered in Noida. Founded by Shiv Nadar, it was spun out in 1991 when HCL entered into the software services business. The company has offices in 59 countries and over 220,000 employees.

Pervasive Software was a company that developed software including database management systems and extract, transform and load tools. Pervasive Data Integrator and Pervasive Data Profiler are integration products, and the Pervasive PSQL relational database management system is its primary data storage product. These embeddable data management products deliver integration between corporate data, third-party applications and custom software.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Stonebraker</span> American computer scientist (born 1943)

Michael Ralph Stonebraker is an American computer scientist specializing in database systems. Through a series of academic prototypes and commercial startups, Stonebraker's research and products are central to many relational databases. He is also the founder of many database companies, including Ingres Corporation, Illustra, Paradigm4, StreamBase Systems, Tamr, Vertica and VoltDB, and served as chief technical officer of Informix. For his contributions to database research, Stonebraker received the 2014 Turing Award, often described as "the Nobel Prize for computing."

ParAccel, Inc. was a California-based software company.

Versant Corporation was an American-based software company building specialized NoSQL data management systems. Versant was founded in Menlo Park, California (USA) in 1988. It was headquartered in Redwood City, California.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Actian Zen</span>

Actian Zen is an ACID-compliant, zero-DBA, embedded, nano-footprint, multi-model, Multi-Platform database management system (DBMS). It was originally developed by Pervasive Software, which was acquired by Actian Corporation in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Actian Vector</span> SQL relational database management system

Actian Vector is an SQL relational database management system designed for high performance in analytical database applications. It published record breaking results on the Transaction Processing Performance Council's TPC-H benchmark for database sizes of 100 GB, 300 GB, 1 TB and 3 TB on non-clustered hardware.

Sqoop is a command-line interface application for transferring data between relational databases and Hadoop.

Amazon Redshift is a data warehouse product which forms part of the larger cloud-computing platform Amazon Web Services. It is built on top of technology from the massive parallel processing (MPP) data warehouse company ParAccel, to handle large scale data sets and database migrations. Redshift differs from Amazon's other hosted database offering, Amazon RDS, in its ability to handle analytic workloads on big data data sets stored by a column-oriented DBMS principle. Redshift allows up to 16 petabytes of data on a cluster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oracle Cloud</span> Cloud computing service

Oracle Cloud is a cloud computing service offered by Oracle Corporation providing servers, storage, network, applications and services through a global network of Oracle Corporation managed data centers. The company allows these services to be provisioned on demand over the Internet.

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