Actian Stages Comeback With Hybrid Database

Actian Corp., which reportedly dropped out of the analytical database market last fall, is making a comeback with the release of a hybrid database that combines transaction processing with its analytics query engine

Actian, Palo Alto, Calif., this week rolled out its hybrid platform dubbed Actian X billed as a native database that merges the company’s Ingres OLTP database with its Vector X-100 analytics query engine. The platform also integrates a new data interconnection tool with the goal of merging siloed analytic, operational and transaction data that separately have limited performance and the ability to draw insights from data.

Actian’s focus as the data management sector becomes more crowded. The company said Tuesday (April 18) its hybrid strategy combines high-end analytics “within an enterprise’s mission critical transactional data systems….” CEO Rohit De Souza, who took the reins at Actian last fall, called the introduction “the start of a multi-phase plan to unify and transform the world of data analytics.”

Actian X is billed as a “natively integrated” hybrid platform designed to manage analytical, transactional and hybrid data workloads from a single database. Operational analytics upgrades include expanded capabilities for current Ingres transaction database applications. Those features would for example enable analysis of clickstream data and historical customer information.

Meanwhile, “in-database functionality” includes new transaction processing features along with support for geospatial algorithms for location-based applications. Actian also stressed integration capabilities that connect the hybrid platform to external data sources.

Also available now is a “DataConnect” tool designed to integrate the hybrid platform with enterprise datacenters as well as public clouds.

The result, the company claims, is nothing less than “a new class of applications that can interleave OLTP and analytics queries on the fly,” outrunning other approaches that are tied to specific applications or limited by available system memory, the company added.

The combined analytics and transaction database along with integration cloud interconnection tools address the current shortfalls in analyzing data in real time via a transactional database backed by “vectorized” columnar analytics. Actian claims its hybrid approach addresses a growing industry trend toward combining transaction processing with data warehousing and analytics in the same in-memory database.

The release of Actian’s hybrid transaction-analytics platform arrives several months after the company reportedly exited the crowded analytical database market. However, the company disputed reports that it was discontinuing its Matrix analytical database as well as its VectorH query engine.

In an email, the company did confirm a leadership shakeup that included the appointment of De Souza as CEO, adding that it was “working with our customers, partners and employees to ensure we are creating cutting-edge technology….”

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