Unveils New Action Apps Strategy: Disrupts Business Intelligence Market
 
REDWOOD CITY, CA, SEPTEMBER 22, 2011 – Actian Corporation (formerly Ingres Corp.) today unveiled its strategy to enable companies to develop Action Apps. Action Apps are lightweight, consumer-style applications that automate business actions triggered by real-time changes in data.

“Actian is turning big data into big outcomes for our customers with Action Apps,” said Steve Shine. “More than $8 billion a year is spent on business intelligence to generate piles of historical reports and no action. Actian picks up where BI falls short by arming customers to take instant actions the second something changes in their data.”

“Virtually all application systems produce management reports, but traditional reports only provide slow-motion situation awareness, based on old events,” according to Roy Schulte, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. “The accelerating pace of business and increasing pressures for better customer service and lower costs are making event-driven activities more important in almost every industry.”

Action Apps will unleash the next level of business innovation and competitive advantage that is currently locked in the endless streams of data flowing through organizations and the industry. Action Apps are easy to build, require no training and provide value far beyond traditional business intelligence applications. Action Apps will be developed, managed and shared on the world’s first Cloud Action Platform™ from Actian.

Developers will be able to use the Cloud Action Platform to create Action Apps in three easy steps:
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Set “Action Probes” to watch and analyze data from a variety of data sources

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Define “Action Triggers” for priority data events and thresholds

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Automatically deliver “Business Actions” when data events occur


For example, a multi-channel retailer develops a social-buying strategy to generate incremental revenue and compete with social couponing offers. The retailer provides an Action App for consumers that enables them to choose products they want to monitor (the probes); set the price at which they would bid or buy (the triggers); and commit to a range of bids or automatic purchases if the price hits a certain threshold (the actions).

“Decision making in Global 2000 companies is often paralyzed with “data-waiting” as people hold off on taking action on problems and opportunities until the data is available,” said Robin Bloor, CEO of the Bloor Group. “This creates an action-deficit resulting in missed opportunities to monetize trends, or worse, creates unnecessary risk that could have been avoided by immediate action.”

“The loyalty of our customers continues to drive our innovation, first with VectorWise and now with Action Apps,” said Shine. “We are excited to see our customers leverage their investments in Actian to innovate and generate new business opportunities with Action Apps.”

According to McKinsey Global Institute Report “Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity”, taking action on big data can yield more than $2 trillion in business value. The report stated that taking action on big data can yield up to $300 billion in healthcare value, $100 billion for service providers, 60%+ increases in margin for retailers, and up to a 50 percent decrease in product development costs in manufacturing.

Today, custom Action Apps are being developed using the real-time insights gained from VectorWise, the industry’s fastest data analytics engine. VectorWise will also be the foundational technology for developing Action Apps on the Cloud Action Platform.

To learn more about Actian and Action Apps, register for the New Era of Action Apps Webinar or visit www.actian.com.