Actian

Actian is a computer software company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, US, with primary focus on hybrid data management, integration, and analytics. Actian has an installed base of over 5,000 active customers including large global enterprises, public sector, and small to medium enterprise. In July 2018, Actian was acquired by Indian-based HCL Technologies and Sumeru Equity Partners for $330 million.[1]

Actian
TypePrivate
Industry
Founded1980 (1980)
Headquarters
United States 

Actian is independently operated and has over 300 employees in offices located in Palo Alto, California, Round Rock, Texas, Islandia, New York, Greenville, South Carolina, Surrey, United Kingdom and Hamburg, IImenau, and Dreieich, Germany. Actian was founded in 1980 and is widely known for its innovative data management and integration technologies, including Vectorwise, Btrieve/Pervasive PSQL, and the Ingres database.

Key Technologies
  • Actian Avalanche Hybrid Cloud Data Warehouse, released to market in March, 2019. Runs on-premise, as a Private Cloud, or on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Public Clouds.
  • Actian Zen (formerly Pervasive PSQL) for data processing and analytics in Mobile, IoT, and remote/branch on-premise and Cloud environments
  • Actian DataConnect for data integration between on-premise, cloud and edge applications and data repositories
  • Actian X for transactional data management with built-in embedded analytics capabilities (incorporates Ingres for OLTP and the core Avalanche engine for OLAP)

Leadership

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.[2] Its initial public offering was held in May 1988 to raise $28 million.[3] By this time, RTI had fierce 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]

OpenROAD

OpenROAD was the small-machine offering of the Ingres database. The suite included Applications-By-Forms (ABF), an early 4GL computer programming language. It provided an ASCII form painter, which automatically bound form fields to a database using ABF, a programming language, with embedded SQL, simplifying the task of making a "CRUD" application for textual data. ABF source code was interpreted into a 3GL language (C or COBOL), which is then compiled so snippets of the native language may be directly embedded in the ABF code. ABF was deprecated by OpenROAD in the early nineties.

Several other database vendors marketed comparable 4GLs at around the same time, such as Pick System Builder, Clipper, and DBASE III. ABF was deprecated by the OpenROAD business unit in the early nineties.

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.[15]

Vectorwise

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.[16] It was released as a commercial product in June, 2010,[17][18][19] initially for 64-bit Linux platform, and later also for Windows. Starting from 3.5 release in April 2014, the product name was shortened to "Vector".[20] In June 2014, Actian Vortex was announced - clustered MPP version of Vector, working in Hadoop with storage in HDFS.[21][22] Actian Vortex was later renamed to Actian Vector in Hadoop. Actian Vector (formerly known as VectorWise) is an SQL relational database management system designed for high performance in analytical database applications.[23] In turn, Actian Vector became the core engine in Actian Avalanche.

Pervasive

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. These embeddable SQL and NoSQL database support integration between corporate data, third-party applications and custom software. 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.[24][25] In 2013, Pervasive Software was acquired by Actian Corporation for $161.9 million, increased from an initial offer of $154 million.[26][27][28]

Actian

In September 2011, Ingres changed its name to Actian, using the marketing phrase "Action Apps".[29] CEO Steve Shine said the new focus would be on lower-cost sales for its cloud action platform.[30] In late 2012, after rejecting an offer by Unicom Systems, Versant Corporation 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.[26]

ParAccel was acquired by Actian in April 2013.[32][33] Analysts expected Actian to market ParAccel for larger databases, and VectorWise for moderately sized applications.[34] 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.[35]

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.[36][37] On November 1, 2016, it was announced that Shine had been replaced as chief executive by Rohit De Souza. A new chief financial officer and executive chairman were also appointed by the board.[38]

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.[39]

Actian later moved back into the Big Data Analytics space, focused on Cloud Data Warehouses, releasing Actian Avalanche in March 2019 [40]

Lewis Black took over as CEO in 2020.[41]

References
  1. "Announcement under Regulation 30 (LODR)-Updates on Acquisition". bseindia.com. July 18, 2018.
  2. Curt Monash (May 23, 2005). "Mike Stonebraker". Computer World. Archived from the original on December 12, 2013. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  3. "Finance Briefs". The New York Times. May 19, 1988. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  4. Lawrence M. Fisher (September 17, 1989). "Oracle's Envious Ascent". The New York Times. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  5. Curt Monash (November 14, 2005). "Ingres memories". Software Memories. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  6. "Company News: ASK Computer To Buy Ingres". The New York Times. September 12, 1990. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  7. Sandra L. Kurtzig; Thomas Trebitsch Parker (1994). CEO: Building a $400 Million Company from the Ground Up. Harvard Business School Press. ISBN 978-0-87584-542-5.
  8. "ASK Computer Dissenter Fails". The New York Times. November 1, 1990. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  9. Eric Lai (December 5, 2005). "Ingres Loyalists Cautiously Hopeful For a Reversal of Database Decline". Computer World. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  10. CA, Inc. (July 31, 2006). "Annual Report for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2006". US Securities and Exchange Commission. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
  11. "Redwood City's Ingres names COO". Silicon Valley Business Journal. July 11, 2006. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  12. "Open-Source Backers March on Washington". The New York Times. July 23, 2009. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  13. Charles Babcock (June 8, 2010). "Ingres Unveils VectorWise Database Engine". InformationWeek. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  14. "CA Technologies sells last of Ingres stake". Silicon Valley Business Journal. November 9, 2010. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  15. Patrick Hoge (July 25, 2011). "Ingres Corp. gets new CEO". San Francisco Business Times. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  16. "CWI spin-off company VectorWise sold to Ingres Corporation".
  17. Clarke, Gavin (2 February 2010). "Ingres' VectorWise rises to answer Microsoft". The Register.
  18. Suleman, Khidr (8 June 2010). "Ingres launches VectorWise database engine". V3.co.uk.
  19. Zukowski, Marcin; Boncz, Peter (2012). "From x100 to vectorwise". Proceedings of the 2012 international conference on Management of Data - SIGMOD '12. p. 861. doi:10.1145/2213836.2213967. ISBN 978-1-4503-1247-9.
  20. "Pssst: Want to Hear About Actian Vector 3.5?". 2016-05-04.
  21. "Vector(wise) goes Hadoop".
  22. "Peter Boncz - Actian Vector on Hadoop: The First Industrial-strength DBMS to Truly Leverage Hadoop".
  23. "Vectorwise Enterprise". Actian Corporation. Retrieved 3 May 2012.
  24. Paul Krill (August 11, 2003). "Pervasive buying Data Junction: Database, integration vendors combine". Info World. Retrieved November 23, 2013.
  25. "Pervasive completes acquisition of Data Junction; Announces new organizational structure optimized for growth". Pervasive. December 8, 2003. Archived from the original on February 2, 2004.
  26. Doug Henschen (February 1, 2013). "Actian Builds Mini Big Data Empire". Information Week. Retrieved December 9, 2013.
  27. Sarah Drake (September 13, 2012). "Pervasive Software to solicit potential bids". Austin Business Journal. Retrieved December 9, 2013.
  28. Christopher Calnan (April 12, 2013). "Software maker Pervasive completes merger with Actian". Austin Business Journal. Retrieved December 9, 2013.
  29. Don Clark (September 22, 2011). "Database-Software Firm Tries 'Action Apps'". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
  30. Iain Thomson (September 23, 2011). "Ingres rebrands as Actian, tackles low-end BI apps: Big BI goes boutique". The Register. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
  31. "Giving Thanks for Versant and Actian". Blog. Enterprise Strategy Group. November 26, 2012. Retrieved December 9, 2013.
  32. Maria Duetscher (April 29, 2013). "Actian Picks Up ParAccel to Boost Analytics Portfolio". Silicon Angle. Retrieved November 19, 2013.
  33. Doug Henschen (April 25, 2013). "Actian Acquires ParAccel, Fuel Behind Amazon RedShift". Information Week. Retrieved November 19, 2013.
  34. Jack Clark (April 25, 2013). "Actian grabs Amazon Redshift's secret sauce: ParAccel for analysing 20TB and above data stores". The Register. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
  35. Gil Press (February 11, 2014). "Top 10 Big Data Pure-Plays 2014". Forbes.com. Retrieved March 31, 2014.
  36. Jack Vaughan (August 31, 2016). "Crowded field gets less crowded". Retrieved October 25, 2016.
  37. David Gutierrez (September 22, 2016). "The Latest Big Changes in Big Data". Inside Big Data. Retrieved January 10, 2017.
  38. "Actian Announces Executive Leadership Changes". Press release. November 1, 2016. Retrieved November 2, 2016.
  39. "Actian X Hybrid Database" (PDF). April 14, 2017. Retrieved May 1, 2017.
  40. "Actian Avalanche Pioneers Next-Generation Cloud Data Warehouse". March 18, 2019. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  41. "Actian Welcomes Lewis Black as CEO". Actian. 2020. Retrieved 8 October 2020.
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