Actian Introduces Comprehensive Data Observability Solution
In a landscape increasingly driven by data, Actian, the data division of HCLSoftware, has announced the release of its latest innovation:
Actian Data Observability. This cutting-edge solution harnesses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to deliver a robust platform for monitoring data quality and anomaly detection. By ensuring data reliability, Actian empowers businesses to accelerate their AI initiatives, enhance innovation, and minimize risks associated with data-driven decision-making.
Traditional data quality approaches often fall short in real-time capabilities, struggling to keep pace with the exponential growth in data volume and velocity. Actian Data Observability is designed to counter these challenges by offering continuous, comprehensive monitoring throughout the data ecosystem. According to statistics from Gartner, by 2026, half of companies implementing distributed data architectures will have adopted data observability tools, a significant increase from less than 20% in 2024. This reflects the vital role that observability plays in maintaining robust data management practices.
Understanding Actian Data Observability
Emma McGrattan, the CTO of Actian, highlighted the growing reliance on data for guiding business decisions, driving AI initiatives, and adhering to regulatory requirements. She pointed out that companies often grapple with unreliable data and hidden quality issues, leading to rising cloud costs. Actian Data Observability rectifies this by providing teams with the insight and confidence they need to trust their data, ultimately transforming it from a liability into a competitive advantage.
Unlike reactive, rule-based approaches, Actian Data Observability simultaneously defines and executes thousands of data quality rules across the data landscape. This comprehensive monitoring encompasses critical dimensions such as freshness, volume, schema deviation, distribution patterns, and customizable business rules. Machine learning-driven anomaly detection identifies outliers, deviations, and unexpected patterns while offering valuable suggestions for root cause analysis to expedite issue resolution.
Advantages for Modern Businesses
Actian Data Observability is engineered to connect any dataset within the ecosystem, enabling businesses to uphold data integrity without sacrificing performance or creating bottlenecks in their data pipelines. This solution optimizes resource consumption on cloud platforms without the need for data sampling, ensuring predictable cloud costs while preventing unexpected surges in expenses.
Particularly beneficial for organizations dealing with complex, voluminous data stacks, Actian Data Observability supports several core use cases:
1.
Data Pipeline Efficiency: Teams can swiftly deliver reliable, AI-ready data products while addressing quality issues early in the data lifecycle through a proactive approach, often referred to as 'shifting left.'
2.
AI Lifecycle Monitoring: It ensures the safety and compliance of AI applications by validating the quality, freshness, and relevance of training data and knowledge sources, allowing for rapid intervention when needed.
3.
Secure Self-Service Analytics: Analysts and data consumers can independently assess data reliability before utilization by accessing real-time status indicators integrated into data catalogs, BI tools, and discovery platforms.
Built on an open architecture, Actian Data Observability seamlessly integrates with cloud data warehouses, data lakes, and streaming platforms. By isolating data quality workloads from production infrastructure, Actian preserves performance and minimizes the impact on critical business operations. Furthermore, for the management of large analytical datasets, Actian provides native integration with Apache Iceberg, ensuring accurate insights, quality checks, and change tracking across systems. To safeguard data security and privacy, this observability tool accesses metadata and performs checks directly where data resides, eliminating the need for unsafe or costly data copies.
Actian Data Observability will be globally available in June 2025, with its integration into the Actian Data Intelligence Platform expected in autumn 2025. For in-depth insights, interested parties can refer to technical documents titled 'Quality Data, Reliable AI: Introducing Actian Data Observability' and 'How to Achieve Complete Data Observability–Without Breaking the Bank.'
About Actian
Actian is committed to enabling businesses to manage and govern their data confidently at scale. Its data management and intelligence solutions streamline complex data environments and accelerate the delivery of AI-ready data. Designed for flexibility, Actian's solutions integrate seamlessly and operate reliably across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. For more information about Actian, visit
actian.com.