Actian is an American

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

company headquartered in

Santa Clara, California Santa Clara ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "Clare of Assisi, Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities and towns i ...

that provides analytics-related software, products, and services. The company sells database software and technology, cloud engineered systems, and data integration solutions.

Timeline

* 1980: Relational Technology, Inc. was founded to commercialize Ingres (developed at UC Berkeley). * 1988: RTI went public, raising $28 million on their IPO. * 1989: Changed name to Ingres Corporation. * 1990: ASK Computer Systems acquires Ingres Corporation. * 1994: Computer Associates (CA) acquires the ASK Group. * 2005: Ingres Corporation spun out of CA, with private equity firm Garnett & Helfrich Capital as largest shareholder. * 2010: Ingres acquires

VectorWise Actian Vector (formerly known as VectorWise) 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 ...

. * 2011: Changed name to Actian. * 2012: Actian acquires

Versant Corporation 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. It was noted in 2005 ...

. * 2013: Actian acquires

Pervasive Software 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 relation ...

and

ParAccel ParAccel, Inc. was a California-based software company. It provided a database management system designed to provide advanced analytics for business intelligence. ParAccel was acquired by Actian in April 2013. History ParAccel was a venture-ba ...

. * 2018: Actian was acquired by

HCL Technologies HCL Technologies Limited ( d/b/a HCLTech) 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. ...

and Sumeru Equity Partners for $330 million. * 2021:

became the sole owner of Actian. *2024: Actian acquires Zeenea

History

Ingres

Ingres was developed at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

and commercialized by Relational Technology Inc. After a course of name changes and acquisitions, including VectorWise BV,

Versant The Versant suite of tests are computerized tests of spoken language available from Pearson PLC. Versant tests were the first fully automated tests of spoken language to use advanced speech processing technology (including speech recognition) t ...

, Pervasive, and

, Actian came into existence as a multinational software firm. Relational Technology, Incorporated (RTI), was founded in 1980 by

Michael Stonebraker Michael Ralph Stonebraker (born October 11, 1943) is an American computer scientist specializing in database, database systems. Through a series of academic prototypes and commercial startups, Stonebraker's research and products are central to m ...

and Eugene Wong, and professor Lawrence A. Rowe to commercialize Ingres. In the late 1980s, RTI had competition in the

database management system In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and an ...

(DBMS) market, including

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

(which had started with the similar name Relational Software Incorporated),

Informix Corporation Informix Corporation, formerly Informix Software, Inc., was a software company located in Menlo Park, California. It was a developer of relational database software for computers using the Unix, Microsoft Windows, and Apple Macintosh operating s ...

, and

Sybase Sybase, Inc. was an enterprise software and services company. The company produced software relating to relational databases, with facilities located in California and Massachusetts. Sybase was acquired by SAP in 2010; SAP ceased using the Syba ...

, but was one of the largest DBMS companies. 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 The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

and

Electronic Data Systems Electronic Data Systems (EDS) Corporation was an American multinational corporation, multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Plano, Texas, which was founded in 1962 by Ross Perot. The company was a s ...

. The deal met resistance from a shareholder, but did complete by November 1990.

Relation to Computer Associates

Computer Associates CA Technologies, Inc., formerly Computer Associates International, Inc., and CA, Inc., was an American multinational enterprise software developer and publisher that existed from 1976 to 2018. CA grew to rank as one of the largest independent ...

(CA) acquired the ASK Group in 1994. Despite a loyal customer base, CA failed to develop the technology much further. Ingres Corporation was spun out of CA as a separate private company in November 2005, with

private equity firm A private equity firm or private equity company (often described as a financial sponsor) is an investment management company that provides financial backing and makes investments in the private equity of a Startup company, startup or of an existin ...

Garnett & Helfrich Capital as largest shareholder. Terry Garnett served as interim chief executive, and CA retained a 25% interest. In July 2006, Roger Burkhardt became president. He promoted

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

, and helped form

Open Source for America Open Source for America (OSFA) is a consortium of various organizations established to advocate for and support the use of free and open-source software in the U.S. Federal government. It consists of various open source foundations, and companies, ...

in 2009. Ingres announced they had acquired the

technology in 2010, which had spun out from the

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica The (abbr. CWI; English: "National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science") is a research centre in the field of mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is part of the institutes organization of the Dutch Research Cou ...

(CWI, the Dutch National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science) in 2008. In November 2010, Garnett & Helfrich Capital acquired the last 20% of equity in Ingres Corporation that it did not already own. In July 2011, Steve Shine became

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

Actian

In September 2011, Ingres changed its name to Actian, using the marketing phrase "action apps". CEO Steve Shine said the new focus would be on lower-cost sales for its cloud action platform. 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. 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. 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. 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. Actian released a product called Avalanche in March 2019 for use on the

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...

(AWS) cloud. In November 2023, Actian rebranded and relaunched Avalanche as Actian Data Platform, including new capabilities for Data Quality. Lewis Black (previously

chief financial officer A chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization who is assigned the primary responsibility for making decisions for the company for projects and its finances; i.a.: financial planning, management of financial risks, ...

) took over as CEO in 2020. In January 2023, Marc Potter was named CEO, after serving as Chief Revenue and Operations Officer since 2019.

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 Actian 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 integra ...

in 2011. It was released as a commercial product in June, 2010, initially for 64-bit Linux platform, and later also for Windows.

Versant Corporation

was an American-based software company building specialized

NoSQL NoSQL (originally meaning "Not only SQL" or "non-relational") refers to a type of database design that stores and retrieves data differently from the traditional table-based structure of relational databases. Unlike relational databases, which ...

data management systems. In late 2012, after rejecting an offer by

Unicom Systems UNICOM Global is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in Mission Hills, California. The company was founded by Corry Hong in Los Angeles, California in 1981 to develop AUTOMON/CICS and related products for the CICS main ...

, Versant announced it agreed to be acquired by Actian, promoted using the term

big data Big data primarily refers to data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data processing, data-processing application software, software. Data with many entries (rows) offer greater statistical power, while data with ...

. It closed in December 2012 for an estimated $37 million.

ParAccel, Inc.

was a

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

-based

company that developed a

designed to provide advanced

analytics Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data, which also falls under and directly relates to the umbrella term, data sc ...

for

business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) consists of strategies, methodologies, and technologies used by enterprises for data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of BI technologies include Financial reporting, reporting, online an ...

. It was acquired by Actian in April 2013. Analysts expected Actian to market ParAccel for larger databases, and VectorWise for moderately sized applications.

Pervasive Software

was a company that developed

including

database management systems In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and ana ...

and

extract, transform and load Extract, transform, load (ETL) is a three-phase computing process where data is ''extracted'' from an input source, ''transformed'' (including cleaning), and ''loaded'' into an output data container. The data can be collected from one or mor ...

tools.

Pervasive PSQL Actian Zen (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). It was originally developed by Pervasive Software ...

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$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

51.7 million in cash and stock shares. In 2013, Pervasive Software was acquired by Actian Corporation for $161.9 million, increased from an initial offer of $154 million.

Zeenea

In August 2024,

HCLSoftware HCL Technologies Limited (d/b/a HCLTech) 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. Th ...

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

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 Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of cloud computing services offered by Google that provides a series of modular cloud services including computing, Computer data storage, data storage, Data analysis, data analytics, and machine learnin ...

Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, or just Azure ( /ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ ''AZH-ər, AY-zhər'', UK also /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ ''AZ-ure, AY-zure''), is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of ...

and AWS. 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 Kubernetes (), also known as K8s is an open-source software, open-source OS-level virtualization, container orchestration (computing), orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Originally designed by Googl ...

), using

Vector Vector most often refers to: * Euclidean vector, a quantity with a magnitude and a direction * Disease vector, an agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism Vector may also refer to: Mathematics a ...

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 is 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 In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for Business intelligence, reporting and data analysis and is a core component of business intelligence. Data warehouses are central Re ...

, run sub-second queries and advanced analytics and then visualize and report, leveraging most popular tools through easily navigated menus.

Vector

Actian Vector Actian Vector (formerly known as VectorWise) 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 Counci ...

(formerly known as Vectorwise or VectorWise) is an SQL

relational database management system A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured for ...

designed for high performance in analytical database applications. Starting from 3.5 release in April 2014, the product name was shortened to "Vector". In June 2014, Actian Vortex was announced - clustered MPP version of Vector, working in

Hadoop Apache Hadoop () is a collection of Open-source software, open-source software utilities for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. It provides a software framework for Clustered file system, distributed storage and processing of big data usin ...

with storage in

HDFS Apache Hadoop () is a collection of open-source software utilities for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. It provides a software framework for distributed storage and processing of big data using the MapReduce programming model. Hadoop wa ...

. Actian Vortex was later renamed to Actian Vector in Hadoop. In turn, Actian Vector became the core engine in Actian Avalanche.

Ingres

Ingres Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ( ; ; 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassicism, Neoclassical Painting, painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic ...

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. 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. In 2024, Actian withdraw the Actian X brand, making all its 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 A fourth-generation programming language (4GL) is a high-level programming language, high-level computer programming language that belongs to a class of languages envisioned as an advancement upon third-generation programming languages (3GL). Each ...

(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 In computing, Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standard application programming interface (API) for accessing database management systems (DBMS). The designers of ODBC aimed to make it independent of database systems and operating systems. An ...

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

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 MapReduce is a programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating big data sets with a parallel and distributed algorithm on a cluster. A MapReduce program is composed of a ''map'' procedure, which performs filte ...

, thus avoiding its 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. Through a partnership with

KNIME KNIME (), the Konstanz Information Miner, is a data analytics, reporting and integrating platform. KNIME integrates various components for machine learning and data mining through its modular data pipelining "Building Blocks of Analytics" con ...

, DataFlow also enhances data science workflows by enabling seamless integration with KNIME's analytics platform. Notably, Actian DataFlow is fully independent of

Google Cloud Dataflow Google Cloud Dataflow is a fully managed service for executing Apache Beam pipelines within the Google Cloud Platform ecosystem. Dataflow provides a fully managed service for executing Apache Beam pipelines, offering features like autoscaling, dyna ...

, built as a proprietary Actian solution unrelated to

Apache Beam Apache Beam is an open source unified programming model to define and execute data processing pipelines, including ETL, batch and stream (continuous) processing. Beam Pipelines are defined using one of the provided SDKs and executed in one of t ...

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.

Zen (PSQL)

Actian Zen (PSQL) Actian Zen (formerly Architecture of Btrieve, 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). It was originally develope ...

(formerly

Btrieve Btrieve is a transactional database ( navigational 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 ...

, later named Pervasive PSQL until version 13) is an

ACID An acid is a molecule or ion capable of either donating a proton (i.e. Hydron, hydrogen cation, H+), known as a Brønsted–Lowry acid–base theory, Brønsted–Lowry acid, or forming a covalent bond with an electron pair, known as a Lewis ...

-compliant, Zero-DBA, Embedded, Nano-footprint, Multi-Model, Multi-Platform

(DBMS).

Actian NoSQL (Versant)

Actian NoSQL (formerly known as Versant Object Database or VOD) is a high-performance,

object database 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 ...

, focused on complex data management with real-time processing capabilities, particularly suited for highly complex object-oriented applications, embedded applications and analytical use cases.

HCL Informix

After its 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. HCL Informix is a multi-model database management system, with a modular architecture, enabling it be used for enterprise applications or embedded solutions. It is 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: *Zeenea Studio: Tailored for data stewards and managers, focusing on data cataloging, governance, and metadata management. *Zeenea Explorer: User-friendly search tool aimed at business users, enabling easy data asset discovery.

References

External links

Actian Corporation
{{Authority control Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Companies based in Palo Alto, California Software companies established in 1980 1980s initial public offerings 2018 mergers and acquisitions Software companies of the United States 1990 mergers and acquisitions