Actian CTO Details Database Strategy

The Benefits of Big Data Hindered by Traditional Analytic Approaches

By already owning Versant, Ingres and Vectorwise, Actian has no shortage of database platforms to choose from. But with the acquisition of ParAccel, Actian is now adding a massively parallel database to the company’s stable for database platforms.

According to Actian CTO Mike Hoskins, the way to think about all these database platforms is as engines that are part of a continuum. In time, developers will routinely develop composite applications that will invoke each class of database platform based on the particular subset requirements of any given application.

What ultimately will differentiate Actian in the MPP space, says Hoskins, is that rather than being dependent proprietary hardware, the ParAccel MPP platform runs on standard x86 servers. That means Actian will be able to ride the curve of x86 server performance improvements without having to invest in proprietary hardware to add faster systems down the road.

With the rise of Hadoop on one end of the spectrum and MPP systems on the other, the options that IT organizations have when it comes to managing data have never been greater. Hoskins says that as it becomes more routine to work with different classes of Big Data, IT organizations are going to appreciate not only the variety of database platforms out there, but also the ones they can get from a single vendor that are optimized for Big Data.

ParAccel is the second major acquisition that Actian has made this month following the signing of an agreement to acquire Pervasive Software that gave it access to a high-performance data integration platform that also runs on x86 servers.

It’s not clear to what degree Actian intends to compete with the larger players in the database management space, but given the current size of its portfolio, it seems determined to make an impact with more than just a little help from lower-cost standard industry servers based on Intel processors.