Actian Zen is a high-performance, embedded database management system designed for efficient data management in various applications, particularly IoT and edge computing. It offers several key features:

• High Performance: Optimized for real-time data processing and quick response times.
• Scalability: Can handle increasing data volumes and diverse endpoints.
• Reliability: Ensures data integrity and availability even in challenging environments.
• Security: Provides robust security features to protect sensitive data.
• Flexibility: Supports NoSQL and SQL data access.
• Easy Integration: Integrates with applications and devices using API.
• Low Maintenance: Minimal administrative overhead.

With more than 13,000 customers, Actian Zen has been utilized around the world across multiple industries to capture data generated by mobile devices, IoT sensors, edge gateways and even complex machinery, giving its users a very high level of confidence in reporting performance at the edge.

Putting Zen Through its Paces: The TPCx-IoT Benchmark

Actian has enjoyed terrific success with its Zen customer base, and while in turn, its customers have greatly benefited from Zen’s strong performance. At the same time, Actian wanted to have a third-party review, comparison, and benchmark report on the performance of the product itself alongside similar market offerings in an unbiased fashion. In October 2024, Actian commissioned the McKnight Consulting Group to run a TCPx-IoT benchmark against two of its key competitors; MongoDB and MySQL.

TPCx-IoT is a benchmark developed by the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) to measure the performance, scalability, and price-performance of IoT (Internet of Things) data ingestion systems. It simulates real-time data ingestion and processing from IoT devices, evaluating a system’s ability to handle large volumes of time-series data efficiently.

Key features of the TPCx-IoT benchmark include:

• Real-World Simulation: The benchmark simulates a realistic IoT scenario with a large
  number of devices generating data.
• Performance Metrics: It measures performance metrics like throughput (IoTps),
  latency, and price-performance.
• Vendor-Neutral: It provides a fair and objective comparison of different IoT data
  management solutions.
• Scalability Testing: It evaluates the system’s ability to handle increasing data volumes
  and device counts.

By using the TPCx-IoT benchmark, organizations can compare the performance of different IoT data management solutions and select the best solution for their specific needs.

Discussion of Results: Actian Zen is a Powerful IoT Engine

The results of the benchmark test showed that Actian Zen was far superior to its key competitors in two important areas: throughput and latency.

• Throughput: Actian Zen processes data significantly faster than other offerings, reaching up to 7,902 records per second compared to MongoDB’s at 2,099. MySQL lags far behind at 162 records per second. This means that Actian Zen has a throughput capability up to 50x the competition!
  
• Latency: Actian Zen consistently demonstrates the lowest latency (time taken to process each record) across various sensor configurations, displaying up to 650x lower latency than the competition. MySQL exhibits the highest latency.
  

According to the McKnight Consulting Group, “In our evaluation of various embedded databases, Actian Zen emerged as a very compelling solution for enterprise-grade IoT workloads.”

Given the importance of real-time data availability at the edge, it is critical that both throughput and latency performance is as strong as they can be, especially given the myriad use cases that exist throughout various industries where having a true, confident view of current endpoint performance is critical, be it within healthcare, logistics, transportation, or another industry. This proves why so many customers, like Global Shop Solutions and Taifun Software AG have confidence in Actian Zen and why so many other organizations are taking a closer look…

Next Steps: Get the Report!

Curious about the benchmark? Want to know more? Here’s how to get started:

• To read the full TPCx-IoT benchmark report from the McKnight Consulting Group, click here.
• To find out more about Zen, check out our website here.

The post Actian Zen: The Market-Leading Embedded Database – Proven! appeared first on Actian.

Pumpkin Carving Contest

A highlight of our Halloween festivities was undoubtedly the pumpkin carving contest. On the morning of the event, the office was transformed into a pumpkin patch, with tables adorned with bright orange pumpkins, carving tools, and a variety of paints and decorations. The Actian teams got to work on creating their masterpieces.

The creativity displayed was remarkable, featuring everything from classic jack-o’-lanterns with cheerful grins to elaborate designs of cats, mushrooms, and eerie faces. Actian employees showcased their pumpkin artistry in the office gallery, where they could vote for their favorites. Colleagues wandered through the display, casting their votes, and Mollie Kendall emerged as the contest winner with her spooky jack-o’-lantern.

Costume Contest

What office Halloween party would be complete without a costume contest? Actian employees showcased their creativity and Halloween spirit in full force! Costumes included everything from clever pop culture references to DIY masterpieces.

The competition was intense, but in the end, the winners earned well-deserved prizes and bragging rights for the year. This event successfully brought the team together, fostering laughter and celebrating the season through friendly rivalry.

First Place: Karl Schimmel, Actian customer engineer, stole the show with his hilarious Andy Reid costume, which would have made Mahomes proud.

Second Place: La’Quinn Drick Hunter wowed everyone with his impressive Luigi costume, despite not having a Mario to accompany him.

Third Place: Kasey Nolan showcased her creativity with a unique mushroom costume that secured her third place.

With such a variety of innovative costumes, the team is already looking forward to next year’s contest!

A Celebration of Team Spirit

Beyond the contests, the Halloween celebration was a fantastic opportunity for Actian teams to take a break from a very productive year. The atmosphere was filled with joy, and it was heartwarming to see everyone come together to celebrate not just Halloween, but the vibrant culture of Actian, both in person and online.

As the day drew to a close, it was clear that this Halloween celebration was more than just a fun escape from work—it was a reminder of the creativity, teamwork, and community spirit that make our company a great place to be. With smiles, full bellies from treats, and a collection of hilarious memories, we’re already looking forward to next year’s celebration!

As we move into the final mile of the year and start to ramp up on holiday planning,  we hope you enjoyed a peek into the Actian culture we are so proud of and invite you to share your own Halloween fun!

The post Spooktacular Fun: Actian Halloween Celebration appeared first on Actian.

• HCL Informix 4GL, a fourth-generation business application development environment that is designed to simplify the building of data-centric business applications, now available from Actian.
• Larger row and page addresses that enhance scalability for large-scale data storage and processing. The new maximum capacity for a single instance is four times the estimated size of the internet.
• External smartblobs enables the storage of binary large objects like static documents, videos and photos in an external file system to facilitate faster archiving.
• Invisible indexes help developers and DBAs fine-tune queries by identifying which indexes are critical to specific queries by flexibly omitting them to see if they impact query runtime. 

These capabilities fortify HCL Informix’s already solid foundation to underpin the next generation of mission-critical applications. They reflect our vision for a more powerful offering that guarantees seamless business continuity and secures the longevity of your organization’s existing applications.

HCL Informix 15 now includes cloud-enabled product capabilities including a Kubernetes containerization deployment option and updated REST APIs (previously only available in HCL OneDB). For customers using HCL OneDB 1.0 and 2.0, we will adhere to the announced lifecycle dates and work with you on a recommended in-place upgrade to HCL Informix.

HCL Informix customers like Equifax are looking forward to taking advantage of these new capabilities to improve their business use cases in the near future.

“HCL Informix 15 will empower Equifax to quickly process a steady stream of payments, claims decisions, tax verifications, and more, enabling us to make data-driven decisions,” said Nick Fuller, Associate Vice President of Technology at Equifax. “Its capacity to handle vast amounts of data gives us confidence in its ability to meet our demand for rapid and efficient processing.”

Watch the Webinar >

Building an advanced database for modern enterprise applications

4GL: Easily maintain and recompile existing 4GL applications

While many IBM Informix customers are familiar with 4GL, Actian is now offering HCL Informix 4GL and HCL Informix SQL for the first time.  HCL Informix customers can leverage 4GL and ISQL to develop and debug applications, including building new menus, forms, screens, and reports with ease. 4GL reduces the time it takes to build and maintain HCL Informix applications and perform database operations like querying, updating, and managing data. Informix 4GL has a powerful report writer that enables the creation of complex reports. This capability is particularly useful for generating business reports from data stored in HCL Informix.

HCL Informix 4GL accelerates the building of applications such as:

• Accounting Systems: Track money owed by and to the business, including invoicing, payment processing, and reports.
• Inventory Management Systems: Manage storage locations, stock movements, and inventory audits.
• Human Resources Systems: Maintain detailed records of employee information, performance, and benefits. 

HCL Informix 15 server re-architected for massive storage capacity improvement

Larger row and page addresses: Manage large data sets without compression

Have peace of mind knowing that data volume limitations are an issue of the past with HCL Informix 15. That means improved reliability and better use of resources because organizations won’t need to compress or fragment tables.

When Informix Turbo launched in 1989, Informix architects believed 4 bytes would more than suffice for uniquely addressing each row so each page could hold a max of 255 rows and each table could have a maximum of 16.7 million pages. Now, some of the largest HCL Informix customers are pushing those original limits to their edge.  While it is possible to fragment tables to get around the max page limit, that’s an imperfect solution at scale. So we’ve expanded storage limits dramatically so max storage capacity is half a yottabyte, four times the estimated size of the internet.

External smartblobs: Store large objects with ease

Large objects like video or audio have traditionally been difficult for transactional databases like HCL Informix to manage because they need to be compressed to store the object efficiently, which takes time.

With HCL Informix 15, external Smartblobs enable developers to store the objects in a file system, while only keeping a record of the metadata. Instead of compressing the data, users can now create a special smartblob space to store the file metadata, with the object files stored externally.

External Smartblobs delivers benefits across a variety of use cases including:

• Quality Assurance: Analyze how well a real-time monitoring system built on HCL Informix detects faulty products on an assembly line. Auditors can identify the product that was discarded in the metadata to find the image files of the faulty product without impacting the underlying application. 
• Tax Authority: Tax administrators need to capture tax returns in case they need to audit a company or individual. They can store the static tax return documents with a specific ID and access them through the HCL Informix application just by using the metadata.

Invisible indexes: Optimize your queries faster

Indexes are special data structures that improve the speed of data retrieval operations on a database table. They work similarly to an index in a book, allowing the database to find and access the data faster without having to scan every row in a table. However, not every index will be used for the queries in an application. HCL Informix 15 enables users to make certain indexes invisible when running an application to help test which indexes impact queries and which ones do not for better operational efficiency.

Invisible indexes support real-world use cases such as:

• E-commerce Platforms often deal with large volumes of transactions and queries. Invisible indexes can be used to test and optimize query performance without disrupting the shopping experience.
• Healthcare System databases require efficient data retrieval for patient records and research. Invisible indexes can help optimize these queries without affecting the overall system.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems handle vast amounts of customer data. Invisible indexes can be used to improve the performance of specific queries related to customer interactions and their history.

Start your modernization project with HCL Informix 15

The Actian team is ready to support you as you get started on your modernization project with HCL Informix 15. 

Check out the on-demand webinar “Secure Your Future with HCL Informix® 15” to learn more about HCL Informix 15. Also, see how your peers are using HCL Informix to modernize their applications. Plus, wait until the end to hear about our limited one-time offer.

Watch the Webinar >

Additional Resources: 

• Four Ways an Off-Support Database Can Derail Your Business
• Modernize Your Business Critical Applications with HCL Informix
• Application Use Cases Powered by HCL Informix
• Application Modernization Checklist

Informix is a trademark of IBM Corporation in at least one jurisdiction and is used under license.

The post Experience Near-Unlimited Storage Capacity With HCL Informix® 15 appeared first on Actian.

The Zeenea Data Discovery Platform is designed to address these challenges head-on. It enables both technical and non-technical users to quickly and efficiently find, access, and trust enterprise data, regardless of where it’s stored.

What Sets the Zeenea Platform Apart in the Marketplace?

The Zeenea Data Discovery Platform is a comprehensive metadata management solution that streamlines data governance, simplifies data discovery, and manages vast data assets. It’s built with flexibility and ease-of-use at its core, catering to both data professionals and everyday data users who don’t have advanced IT skill sets.

One benefit that sets the Zeenea platform apart is its ability to automate processes, ensuring that organizations can keep pace with their rapidly evolving data environment without extensive manual effort. The Zeenea platform is powered by two essential applications:

1. Zeenea Studio. This application is geared toward data professionals, including chief data officers (CDOs), data engineers, data stewards, and data governance teams. It is designed to make data documentation easy and automated, allowing teams to enrich and manage their data with precision. Users can curate data assets, ensuring they are well-organized and readily accessible.

For organizations struggling with the complexity of metadata management, Zeenea Studio simplifies the process by automating the collection and curation of data, reducing manual overhead and increasing accuracy. Data stewards, in particular, can use the platform to ensure that their organization’s data is both trustworthy and compliant with internal and external regulations.

2. Zeenea Explorer. This application is designed for everyday users, making data exploration and discovery simple and intuitive. Whether users are a data scientist, analyst, or business stakeholder, the platform allows them to find relevant data quickly and easily. Its interface is user-friendly, ensuring that even those without a deep technical background can access the data they need to make informed decisions.

The self-service nature of Zeenea Explorer is one of its standout features. It allows business leaders and data teams to access data when they need it, streamlining workflows and accelerating decision-making across departments.

4 Key Differentiators Empower Data-Driven Organizations

Four primary features distinguish the Zeenea Data Discovery Platform from other data management solutions, making it a top choice for modern organizations:

1. API-Based Automation. The solution is a fully API-driven platform, which means that organizations can automate their entire data cataloging process. This level of automation reduces the need for manual updates and ensures that the data catalog stays up-to-date as the data environment evolves. This automation also helps scale metadata management across complex environments with ease.
2. Universal Connectivity. Zeenea supports a wide range of data sources, from traditional databases to cloud services. This universal connectivity makes it an incredibly versatile tool, capable of managing diverse data types across multiple platforms. Organizations with hybrid data environments can also rely on Zeenea to seamlessly discover and manage all their data assets in one place.
3. Powerful Knowledge Graph. A comprehensive knowledge graph enables a progressive design for data discovery. As data needs grow, the knowledge graph adapts, helping uncover relationships between data points, enriching the overall understanding of data assets. This dynamic feature provides deeper insights and allows organizations to maximize the value of their data.
4. Intuitive User Experience. The Zeenea platform is designed with simplicity in mind. It requires no training to use, making it accessible for users of all levels. Whether users are experienced data professionals or business analysts, Zeenea offers an experience that is both intuitive and powerful, allowing for quick adoption and effective use across the organization.

Modern Capabilities to Advance Data Discovery

A data discovery platform like the Zeenea solution is essential for unifying, governing, and leveraging data effectively. In addition to meeting organizations’ needs for data intelligence, the Zeenea Data Discovery Platform offers a variety of innovative capabilities that ensure data is connected, compliant, and easily accessible:

• Business Glossary. Zeenea’s Business Glossary allows organizations to establish a consistent business language across all data consumers. This feature is crucial for ensuring that everyone in the organization is working from the same definitions and standards, fostering collaboration and transparency. Teams can easily define rules, set policies, and visualize relationships between business terms through an intuitive, automated interface.
• Data Compliance. In an era of increased regulation, data compliance is critical. Zeenea helps organizations stay compliant with regulations by detecting personal information and providing suggestions on how to tag and manage sensitive data. This capability allows data stewards to handle compliance issues with greater autonomy, ensuring that data usage across the organization adheres to legal requirements.
• Data Discovery. The Zeenea platform takes inspiration from marketplaces and e-commerce websites, offering smart search capabilities that allow users to find the data they need quickly and efficiently. Whether users know exactly what they are looking for or are exploring potential use cases, the platform’s data discovery capabilities provide smart recommendations and a 360-degree view of relevant data.
• Data Governance. The platform’s data governance capabilities help drive business initiatives by ensuring that data is trusted, secure, and compliant. Zeenea’s approach to governance is collaborative and non-intrusive, adapting to the specific needs of each organization and ensuring that data governance evolves with the organization’s data landscape.
• Data Lineage. Zeenea provides comprehensive data lineage capabilities, allowing data teams to map the entire lifecycle of data, from collection to storage and use. This context-rich view helps organizations understand their data’s origins, relationships, and evolution over time, which is critical for regulatory compliance and improved analytics.
• Data Quality. Through its ability to connect with data quality management (DQM) solutions, the Zeenea platform provides users with data quality metrics during the discovery phase. This ensures that teams can trust the data they are working with, avoiding risks and driving better outcomes.
• Data Shopping. Similar to an online shopping experience, Zeenea’s Enterprise Data Marketplace allows users to browse, request, and gain access to relevant datasets with ease. This intuitive data shopping experience democratizes data access across the organization, empowering users to leverage data for strategic decision-making without needing to be data experts.
• Data Stewardship. The Zeenea platform helps data stewards manage large volumes of data by automating data documentation and enhancing metadata management. Data stewardship reduces the burden on data teams, increases productivity, and ensures that organizations can maintain high data standards without the need for extensive manual input. 

Make Data Usable and Accessible to Everyone

At its core, Zeenea is a smart data discovery platform that enables organizations to find, trust, and unlock the value of their enterprise data. By offering both technical and non-technical users the tools they need to access and understand their data, the platform empowers informed decision-making, drives productivity, and fosters collaboration.

With capabilities such as Zeenea Studio and Zeenea Explorer, organizations can maximize the value of their data while maintaining governance and compliance. Whether it’s enriching data, ensuring regulatory compliance, or democratizing access to data across the enterprise, the Zeenea platform provides a scalable, flexible solution that adapts to the evolving needs of today’s data-driven businesses. Experience it for yourself with a live tour.

The post The Game-Changing Data Discovery Platform for Data Democratization appeared first on Actian.

The Disconnect Between Data and Business Outcomes

Many organizations invest heavily in data technologies, expecting this will lead to improved business performance. Yet a common challenge persists: Despite all the data at their disposal, companies are still struggling to convert that data into meaningful, high-value outcomes. This disconnect stems from the overwhelming complexities of data, particularly as organizations attempt to scale their data initiatives.

Scaling brings new hurdles. Companies relying on legacy systems or outdated methodologies often find themselves bogged down by complex data architectures and cumbersome workflows. As the volume of data grows, so do the complexities of managing, governing, and leveraging it effectively. Manual processes and legacy tools simply cannot keep pace with the demand for real-time insights and actionable information.

In addition, many organizations fail to modernize their approach to data and analytics governance, which is crucial for a successful digital transformation and fully optimizing data. Without proper governance, data becomes fragmented, difficult to access, and ultimately less valuable to the business. These issues lead to costly projects that either fail outright or deliver a low return on investment (ROI), causing businesses to miss critical opportunities.

Benefit From the Exponential Growth of Data

One of the most pressing challenges organizations face today is the exponential growth of data, coming from more sources than ever. Data flows from countless sources, including:

• Internal systems
• Cloud services
• Customer interactions
• IoT devices
• Social media
• Other sources

This data influx places immense pressure on traditional tools and methods, which are proving to be insufficient in managing, governing, and securing vast amounts of data. As data grows in volume and variety, so does the need for automation. That’s because manual processes can no longer handle the scale required to keep data accurate, secure, and accessible. Information gaps arise, and organizations miss out on valuable insights that could drive competitive advantage.

This places a growing need for a data intelligence solution. Additionally, there is increased awareness that without a streamlined, automated approach to data intelligence, organizations won’t be able to effectively manage their expanding data landscape.

The Three Critical Questions of Data Management

At the heart of data management challenges are three critical questions that every organization must address to optimize the full potential of their data:

1. Where is my data? Data is often scattered across multiple systems, departments, and geographic regions. Without a unified view, it’s nearly impossible to leverage data effectively. Siloed data environments hinder innovation and slow down decision-making processes.
2. Can I trust my data? Data quality remains a major issue for many organizations. In fact, many companies don’t measure the financial cost of poor data quality, which makes it difficult to determine how inadequate data is impacting the business. When data is inaccurate or incomplete, it undermines decision making and leads to inefficiencies. Trustworthy data is ultimately the foundation of trustworthy business decisions.
3. Can I easily access the data? At many companies, access to data is often restricted due to compliance rules, security measures, or siloed systems. This lack of access prevents teams from fully leveraging the data needed to innovate and respond to market changes quickly. Data should be readily available to every person and application that needs it.

Key Capabilities of a Modern Data Intelligence Platform

Addressing data challenges requires a comprehensive solution that centralizes, verifies, and governs data efficiently. This is where a data intelligence platform that democratizes data across the organization becomes essential.

A data intelligence platform provides a unified approach to managing, governing, and leveraging data, regardless of where it’s stored. It aligns data practices with business objectives, ensuring that data is accurate, secure, and accessible when needed. It addresses the key aspects of data management:

• Data Integration. Connecting data from various sources into a single, unified view is mandatory for making informed decisions. A data intelligence platform integrates data seamlessly, providing a holistic view of all data assets across the organization.
• Data Quality. Maintaining data accuracy, consistency, and reliability is critical to ensuring trustworthy insights. A data intelligence platform automates data quality processes, including cleansing, monitoring, and enrichment, to ensure that data remains useful and accurate.
• Data Governance. Effective data governance is crucial for managing data security, privacy, and compliance. A data intelligence platform helps establish and enforce data governance policies, ensuring that data is used appropriately and remains protected.
• Analytics and Insights. A data intelligence platform enables analytics and machine learning capabilities, empowering organizations to extract valuable insights from their data. This allows for predictive and prescriptive decision making, helping businesses stay ahead of the competition.
• Data Cataloging. Metadata management is a key component of any data intelligence platform. By cataloging data assets, a platform makes it easier for users to discover, understand, and access the data they need, even without deep technical expertise.
• Self-Service Capabilities. Data professionals, business users, and decision makers need the ability to access and analyze data without relying on IT teams or advanced skill sets. A data intelligence platform empowers users with self-service tools, making it easier to derive insights and act on them quickly.

The Business Impact of Data Intelligence

Implementing a data intelligence platform has a direct impact on operational efficiency and business outcomes. When employees spend less time searching for and cleaning data, they can focus on using that data to drive innovation and deliver value. This operational efficiency translates directly into revenue potential.

Likewise, trust in data also leads to confidence in the decisions derived from it. With trustworthy data, organizations can move faster, capitalize on market opportunities, and make strategic pivots when necessary.

Data governance, a core component of data intelligence, also ensures compliance with privacy and security regulations, protecting sensitive data and minimizing risk. In addition, good data leads to better business outcomes. Accurate forecasts, informed decisions, and faster responses to changing market conditions all stem from having the right data at the right time.

Solving Complexity With the Right Data Intelligence Platform

Managing data in today’s digital landscape is complex, but with the right tools, organizations can overcome the challenges of scale, governance, and data quality. A data intelligence platform, like the Zeenea Data Discovery Platform, provides a comprehensive solution for integrating, managing, and leveraging data across the enterprise.

By addressing the critical questions of data management—where is data, can it be trusted, and can it be easily accessed—a data intelligence platform unlocks the full potential of an organization’s data. This allows businesses to drive operational efficiency, improve decision making, and deliver better business outcomes.

In a world where data is the new currency, investing in a data intelligence platform is business critical. To find out more, take a Zeenea Live Product Tour

The post Why a Data Intelligence Platform is Business Critical appeared first on Actian.

This is where Actian’s partner program stands out. It offers opportunities for you to complement your solutions with Actian products and services to meet customers’ current and future data needs. No single vendor can meet the diverse and complex data needs of today’s businesses, making strategic alliances essential to provide robust and tailored solutions to customers.

The Power of Partnerships in Technology

Partnering with a technology leader like Actian is not just a strategic move—it is essential when you want to stay competitive, reach new customers, and continue adding value for current customers. Collaborating with Actian can support innovation, streamline operations, and provide access to innovative technologies that strengthen customers’ tech stacks and offer a connected ecosystem.

The Actian partner program is designed to optimize the strengths of our modern and expanding product portfolio by integrating our offerings with your technologies and services. By forming strategic partnerships with Actian, you can unlock the full potential of your data products and services while benefiting from a robust network of technologies, expert services, and solution partners. 

Actian’s Unique Partner Value Proposition

As a forward-thinking data technology company, Actian offers a modern data management and data intelligence portfolio that enables customers to easily connect, govern, and analyze their data. Our solutions enable businesses to seamlessly manage data across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments—and have confidence in their decision-making.

More than 42 million users around the world use our products, with over 20,000 businesses trusting our scalable technologies. When you partner with Actian, you gain several distinct advantages:

• Comprehensive Training and Support. Actian invests heavily in its partners, which is why coming soon, we’ll offer training and certification courses that ensure you are equipped to deliver the best possible solutions to customers​. This investment in skills development translates into greater customer satisfaction and higher success rates for joint projects.
• Flexible Go-to-Market (GTM) Models. You can leverage a variety of GTM strategies through a partnership with Actian. Whether through co-branding, co-participation at events, or access to marketing development funds, Actian ensures that its partners are positioned for success​.
• Competitive Compensation. With margin-sharing models and generous incentives, you can benefit from substantial financial benefits. These incentives are designed to promote long-term, mutually beneficial relationships, rather than focusing on short-term gains​.

4 Types of Partnerships Supported by Actian

Actian’s flexibility extends to the types of partnerships it supports, ensuring that vendors with various solutions can benefit from the partner program:

1. Cloud Providers. Cloud adoption continues to accelerate, with companies looking for efficient ways to migrate to and manage their data in the cloud. Actian’s rapid onboarding process and hybrid capabilities make it easy for cloud providers to offer comprehensive data management solutions to customers.
2. Systems Integrators. Systems integrators can enhance their service offerings by implementing Actian’s database and data management technologies into their client projects. This drives revenue while also boosting customer satisfaction by delivering purpose-built solutions that address specific business challenges​.
3. ISVs/OEMs. Independent software vendors (ISVs) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can embed Actian technologies into their products, offering differentiating features such as advanced data integration and analytics capabilities. This allows these businesses to stand out in their respective markets while benefiting from Actian’s extensive technologies and support​.
4. Technology Alliances. Actian partners with other technology leaders to deliver powerful joint solutions. By embedding Actian’s data management and analytics tools into their own technologies, tech partners can provide enhanced value to customers and gain a competitive edge​.

Why You Should Partner with Actian

Partnering with Actian allows you to leverage a proven data portfolio that accelerates transformation and modernization, enabling customers to make confident, data-driven decisions that grow their business. Core reasons to partner with Actian include:

• Access to Cutting-Edge Technology. Actian’s portfolio is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing infrastructures, providing businesses with scalable, reliable, and high-performance data solutions. This enables both partners and customers to stay ahead of the curve in terms of innovation and technological advancement.
• Mutual Success Focus. Actian’s partnership philosophy is centered on long-term relationships rather than transactional engagements. We work closely with partners, aligning goals and objectives to ensure mutual success. This commitment to collaboration helps you exceed customer expectations, delivering projects that consistently outperform competitors​.
• Global Reach and Expertise. Actian’s global presence, extensive customer base, and experience working with leading companies position you for success in any market. Our deep expertise—spanning more than 50 years—in data management allows you to offer industry-leading solutions to a wide range of industries and geographies​.

Partner with Actian to Unlock New Opportunities

Joining Actian’s partner program is an opportunity to grow your business, enhance your technology stack offerings, and deliver value-driven solutions to customers. Our combination of industry-leading products, expert support, and a collaborative partnership model ensures that your company is well equipped to tackle the challenges your customers face with modern data management.

Whether you are a cloud provider, systems integrator, ISV, OEM, or looking to form a technology alliance, partnering with Actian will empower your business to scale and innovate. Our commitment to partners, supported by comprehensive partner benefits, makes Actian an ideal choice for vendors like yours that are seeking to advance their data capabilities offerings.

Actian’s track record of success, commitment to its partners, and industry-leading solutions make it a standout partner in today’s data-driven world. Explore the opportunities that come with joining the Actian partner program and unlock new pathways to success. Get signed up today!

The post Why Partner With Actian: A Strategic Alliance for Success appeared first on Actian.

According to IoT Analytics, there were 16.6 billion connected IoT devices by the end of 2023 (a growth of 15% over 2022). IoT Analytics expects this to grow 13% to 18.8 billion by the end of 2024. 

To fully harness the potential of this data deluge, a robust data governance framework is essential.

Why Data Governance Matters in IoT

Data governance is the practice of managing the availability, usability, integrity, and security of an organization’s data assets. In the context of IoT, it ensures that data is collected, stored, processed, and analyzed in a consistent, reliable, and compliant manner. Here are some key reasons why data governance is crucial for IoT success:

1. Regulatory Compliance: IoT devices often collect and process sensitive personal data, necessitating adherence to stringent regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA. Data governance ensures that organizations can demonstrate compliance and avoid hefty fines.
2. Data Quality: IoT devices can generate inaccurate or incomplete data due to various factors, such as sensor malfunctions or network connectivity issues. Data governance helps identify and rectify data quality issues, ensuring that decisions are based on reliable information.
3. Data Security: IoT devices are potential targets for cyberattacks, making data security a paramount concern. Data governance establishes policies and procedures to protect sensitive data from unauthorized access, breaches, and data loss.
4. Data Privacy: IoT devices often collect personal data, raising privacy concerns. Data governance helps organizations implement measures to protect individuals’ privacy rights and comply with data privacy regulations.
5. Data Accessibility: A well-governed data environment empowers users to access and analyze data, regardless of their technical expertise. Data governance fosters data literacy and enables data-driven decision-making across the organization.

Key Capabilities of a Data Governance Framework

A comprehensive data governance framework incorporates various capabilities to ensure data quality, security, and compliance. Let’s delve into some of the critical capabilities:

1. Data Catalog: A data catalog provides a centralized repository of information about data assets, including their definitions, metadata, and relationships. It enables users to discover and understand data, accelerating data analysis and insights.
2. Business Glossary: A business glossary defines common business terms and their meanings, ensuring consistent understanding across the organization. It helps bridge the gap between technical and business users, facilitating effective communication and collaboration.
3. Data Lineage: Data lineage traces the journey of data from its source to its destination, revealing how data is transformed and used. It helps identify data dependencies, assess impact, and troubleshoot data quality issues.
4. Data Discovery: Data discovery tools enable users to search, explore, and visualize data. They help users find relevant data, understand its context, and gain insights without requiring deep technical skills.
5. Data Quality: Data quality management ensures that data is accurate, complete, consistent, timely, and relevant. It involves monitoring data quality metrics, implementing data cleansing and validation processes, and establishing data quality standards.

Democratizing Data Access Through Data Governance

Data governance plays a crucial role in democratizing data access, making data-driven insights available to a wider audience within the organization. By establishing clear data standards, providing user-friendly tools, and fostering a data-driven culture, organizations can empower employees to make informed decisions.

Benefits of Democratizing Data Access:

• Enhanced Decision-Making: Data-driven insights enable better decision-making at all levels of the organization.
• Increased Innovation: Access to data fosters creativity and innovation, leading to new products and services.
• Improved Operational Efficiency: Data-driven insights can streamline processes and reduce costs.
• Enhanced Customer Experience: Data-driven personalization and customer insights improve customer satisfaction.

Data governance is no longer an option but a necessity for IoT success. By implementing a robust data governance framework, organizations can unlock the full potential of their IoT data, ensuring regulatory compliance, data quality, security, and accessibility. By democratizing data access, organizations can empower their workforce, drive innovation, and achieve sustainable growth.

Our recent acquisition of Zeenea enables us to offer our customers a unified data intelligence and governance solution to seamlessly discover, govern, and maximize the value of their data assets. 

Zeenea is a cloud-native Data Discovery Platform with universal connectivity that supports metadata management applications from search and exploration to data catalog, lineage, governance, compliance and enterprise data marketplace. Powered by an adaptive knowledge graph, Zeenea enables organizations to democratize data access and generate a 360-degree view of their assets, including the relationships between them.democratize data access and generate a 360-degree view of their assets, including the relationships between them.

Discover the platform by taking a guided product tour of Zeenea.

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Enter next-generation data catalogs—innovative solutions that are designed to transform the way you discover, govern, and leverage your data. These cutting-edge data catalogs offer intuitive interfaces, advanced automation, and robust governance features that empower all users, making them essential for any company striving to harness the full power of its data assets.

As you focus on making data more accessible and actionable, next-generation data catalogs can help. They have emerged as a critical component in the modern data landscape.   

How Next-Generation Data Catalogs Differ from Traditional Solutions

Traditional data catalogs have served businesses well for years, providing a repository to store and manage metadata and helping organizations locate critical data assets. However, these catalogs are often bulky, slow, and expensive, creating barriers to broader adoption, especially by non-technical users.

In addition, legacy data catalogs typically come with hefty license fees and require significant manual effort to classify and manage data. In contrast, next-generation data catalogs provide faster, more cost-effective, and user-friendly solutions designed to meet the needs of modern businesses. Next-gen data catalogs offer:

• Cloud-Native Architecture. Traditional data catalogs are often tied to on-premises systems, which can limit scalability and accessibility. Modern catalogs are built natively for the cloud, offering a flexible, scalable architecture that grows with your business.

The architecture allows you to integrate a wide range of cloud platforms, applications, and on-premises systems seamlessly for a connected ecosystem. A cloud-native architecture also makes it easier to manage data in hybrid or multi-cloud environments, ensuring the catalog can adapt as your infrastructure evolves.

• Ease of Use. One key differentiator of next-generation data catalogs is their focus on ease of use. Traditional solutions often require specialized skills to navigate, limiting their usability to data professionals and technical users. Next-gen catalogs, on the other hand, are designed with the non-technical user in mind.

These modern catalogs feature intuitive user interfaces and automated workflows that simplify the process of finding, accessing, and utilizing data, making them accessible to a broader range of users within your organization. Whether it’s through natural language search or user-friendly data lineage displays, these catalogs empower you to work with data without requiring deep technical expertise. Ultimately, this helps democratize the data flow process.

• Enhanced Data Governance and Compliance. While traditional catalogs have long supported data governance, next-generation catalogs take it a step further by automating much of the data governance process. These solutions offer role-based access controls, automatic metadata tagging, and support for business glossaries, making it easier to manage sensitive information and ensure compliance with regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Some next-gen catalogs even incorporate advanced capabilities to automatically detect and classify sensitive data. They can then provide real-time alerts and insights to prevent data breaches.

• Cost-Effective Solutions. The pricing model of traditional data catalogs has been a significant barrier for many organizations, with enterprise licenses costing upwards of $150,000 annually, according to a report from Eckerson Group “Next-Generation Data Catalogs.” In contrast, modern catalogs offer competitive pricing models, often at a fraction of the cost.

For example, the report notes that the annual cost for next-gen data catalogs typically ranges from $70,000 to $90,000. Lower costs, combined with new features and reduced manual effort, make these catalogs an attractive option for businesses of all sizes.

5 Ways Actian Zeenea Stands Out for Its Next-Generation Data Catalog

Among the modern data catalogs on the market, Actian’s Zeenea Data Discovery Platform stands out as a modern solution for modernizing your data management practices. It offers an ideal platform and data catalog for data-driven organizations like yours to democratize data, centralize and unify all enterprise metadata, and offer a single source of truth.

Five key reasons to use the Zeenea data discovery platform include:

1. A Focus on Simplicity and User Experiences. Zeenea is focused on delivering simplicity—and this is reflected in the platform’s clean and intuitive user interface. The Zeenea platform offers two user interfaces: Zeenea Explorer for business users who need to discover and explore data, and Zeenea Studio for data stewards responsible for managing and governing data assets. This separation of interfaces ensures that both technical and non-technical users can interact with the data catalog in ways that are most relevant to their roles.

2. Enterprise Data Marketplace Integration. What sets Zeenea apart from many of its competitors is its Enterprise Data Marketplace. This feature allows business domains within your organization to share data products seamlessly, enabling greater collaboration and data democratization across departments. When users look to access a data product, the Zeenea platform routes those requests through third-party workflow systems, like those from Jira or ServiceNow, to ensure governance policies are followed while maintaining ease of use. 

3. Advanced Metadata Management and Federation. The Zeenea Data Discovery Platform is built on a knowledge graph that supports multiple metamodels, allowing each business domain to create its own data catalog tailored to its specific needs. These domain-specific catalogs can then be combined into an enterprise catalog, providing a holistic view of your data landscape. This flexibility is crucial when operating across multiple business units or geographies because it allows you to maintain a unified data catalog while accommodating the unique requirements of each domain.

4. Seamless Integration and Interoperability. With more than 70 proprietary data connectors, the Zeenea solution integrates with a wide range of data platforms, cloud applications, and on-premises systems. This ensures that the catalog can pull metadata from virtually any source within your organization, providing a comprehensive view of your data ecosystem. Additionally, by integrating with third-party applications such as Monte Carlo and Soda, you benefit from data quality monitoring to maintain high levels of data accuracy and reliability.

5. Future-Ready Without the Hype. While many next-gen data catalogs are rushing to integrate AI features, Zeenea takes a measured approach, only adopting new technologies that have proven value to customers. For example, the Zeenea platform uses GenAI to summarize long descriptions and improve usability in targeted areas. This approach ensures that the platform remains cutting-edge without overwhelming users with unproven features.

A Strategic Investment in Data-Driven Success

As you continue to navigate the complexities of the digital age, the need for robust, scalable, and user-friendly data management solutions is more critical than ever. Next-generation data catalogs, like the one from Zeenea, offer a powerful alternative to traditional solutions, providing enhanced usability, governance, and cost-efficiency.

Investing in a next-generation data catalog is not just a smart choice—it’s a strategic imperative. The Zeenea platform, with its focus on simplicity, integration, and innovation, is well-positioned to help you gain maximum value from your data and drive meaningful business outcomes.

“The Zeenea Data Discovery Platform is more than just a data catalog: it bundles at no cost a data marketplace for publishing and consuming data products, putting Zeenea on the cutting-edge of all data catalogs,” according to the Eckerson Group.

Experience the platform for yourself with a Zeenea product tour.

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What most organizations promptly discover as part of that process, however, is that getting their data assets organized in a way that will allow them to fully take advantage of these technologies is much harder than it first appears. The reasons are many – from a complex mix of data formats, data silos and data management tools, to uncertainty around how to best manage the process, the data preparation and organization – and collectively, these factors are fast becoming a major stumbling block for many companies.

In fact, according to a recent survey by TECHnalysis Research of IT decision makers in over 1,000 U.S. companies that are doing work with GenAI, Data Preparation and Integration is one of the top five challenges that companies face. In an interesting twist, in an Actian survey of 550 professionals (70% of which were director or higher) in 6 countries and 7 industries, 79% indicated that they believe they’re prepared for GenAI. However, when Gartner asked people in charge of AI data readiness, only 4% said they were ready.

Another problem is that most organizations don’t have any organized governance plans for their data. That same TECHnalysis Research survey found that just under 30% of large enterprises (1,000+ employees) and a whopping 64% of medium businesses (100-999 employees) don’t have governance plans of any kind for their GenAI projects.

One key issue is that many people don’t fully understand what data governance is and why it’s important. On top of that, even organizations that have started to put together data governance policies and procedures don’t know best practices to ensure that they’re getting the right kind of data fed into their algorithms and large language models (LLMs). The net result is a large percentage of organizations aren’t using their critical data as effectively as they could be and that, in turn, typically translates into customized models and applications that aren’t as effective or as productive as they were expected to be. In fact, according to Gartner, by 2027, 60% of organizations will fail to realize the anticipated value of their AI use cases due to incohesive ethical governance frameworks.

To address these issues, companies clearly need not only a wide range of tools to best organize, manage and prepare their data for use, but also a framework and set of guidelines. This ensures that the most effective policies and procedures for acquiring and using data are in place to maximize the return on investment of implementing these emerging technologies.

That’s where a company like Actian, a division of HCL Software, comes into play. Actian currently offers a range of tools designed to organize and optimize a company’s data assets for a wide variety of innovative technologies, including GenAI. This is essential because, as many businesses have already discovered, the quality of the output that an application creates is utterly dependent on the quality of the data its underlying model is trained on. It’s a classic case of garbage in, garbage out—or more positively, high-quality data in, effective, impactful and trustworthy results out.

Actian’s suite of tools tackles everything from data organization to advanced analytics, all designed towards optimizing large volumes of data for ingestion. In particular, the company’s tools have a strong focus on metadata, which is quickly proving to be an essential part of the training process. Essentially, the more accurately and thoroughly an organization’s data can be documented or described via metadata, the more effectively a company can use that data in its training process for multiple applications, including GenAI. Plus, well-documented data can help reduce hallucinations and other misleading output that all LLMs are still occasionally prone to produce.

To help broaden its range of capabilities in these areas, Actian recently completed the purchase of Zeenea, a company that’s built a Data Discovery Platform centered around a Data Catalog. Zeenea’s Data Catalog lets companies organize all their various data assets into a single catalog structure that leverages metadata to create a single searchable repository. This, in turn, helps data consumers within an organization find the information they need via either simple text-based searches or a visual Knowledge Graph. The Knowledge Graph utilizes semantic metadata to link together numerous independent data sources and provide context and easy-to-see visual connections across these data assets.

The latest enhancement to these catalog capabilities is the company’s new Actian Zeenea Federated Data Catalog, which takes the data cataloging concept to a new level by integrating its capabilities across an organization. This federated catalog leverages a domain-oriented data management approach where the teams most familiar with the data manage their own data assets, permissions, and governance in a dedicated data catalog. Domains can then publish their most valuable data assets in a shared Enterprise Data Marketplace, ready to be consumed as products by all business functions within the organization. By using the same principles and concepts across these different domains, organizations end up with a decentralized, yet consistent data management structure that provides an easier and more effective method for sharing critical data. Most importantly, they do so in a manner that provides a consistent set of governance principles, helping them avoid potential regulatory and other data compliance issues.

In addition to these data preparation and organization tools, Zeenea also provides its customers with a tested, mature set of data governance solutions and a comprehensive data governance framework to ensure best practices can be leveraged across the data preparation process.

Zeenea’s effective Data Governance Framework provides a straightforward but comprehensive set of policies and procedures that can help ensure that organizations of different types and with different needs can all get the most from their data assets. More than just a list of rules to follow, the framework has suggestions on organizational structure, questions and topics to be addressed in meetings, strategies for implementing some of the key concepts, and more.

The framework is also designed to help ensure buy-in across an organization’s critical decision-makers—a key make or break point for many advanced projects—as well as offer important practical benefits. For example, a properly followed framework can help organizations stay within any regulatory and legal requirements to which they might be subject, avoid data-driven bias in the output results, prevent loss of critical IP, address any potential ethical issues, and much more.

There’s no question that new technologies, like GenAI and the new kinds of applications the technology is enabling, are opening up some amazing new potential for companies to improve their productivity, stay ahead of their competitors, enhance their bottom line, and become truly “data driven.” At the same time, as with many other new technologies, it’s also opening up the potential for new types of risks and challenges.

As a result, companies who are eager to jump into the new exciting applications of data, like GenAI, need to be certain that they’re well prepared for the adventure. Taken together, Actian’s set of data preparation tools along with Zeenea’s Data Discovery Platform, Federated Data Catalog and governance framework can help companies have a smooth, organized, and comprehensive data preparation process. Given how important this process is and how much it can impact the ultimate success or failure of advanced data initiatives, it’s clear that it’s a topic that organizations of all types and sizes need to get much smarter about now.

The post Stop Wasting Data: Build a Future-Proof Strategy With Data Governance appeared first on Actian.

Understanding Data Quality

At the heart of any data-driven initiative lies the fundamental need for accurate, complete, and timely information. Data quality encompasses a multifaceted set of attributes that determine the trustworthiness and fitness-for-purpose of data. That’s where a data quality framework can help. From ensuring data integrity and consistency to minimizing errors and inconsistencies, a robust data quality framework is essential for unlocking the true potential of an organization’s data assets.

Organizations can automate data profiling, validation, and standardization by leveraging advanced data quality tools. This improves the overall quality of the information and streamlines data management processes, freeing up valuable resources for strategic initiatives. These two essential steps can help organizations ensure their data meets their quality standard:

Profiling Data With Precision

The first step in achieving data quality is understanding the underlying data structures and patterns. Automated data profiling tools, such as those offered by Actian, empower organizations to quickly and easily analyze their data, uncovering potential quality issues and identifying areas for improvement. By leveraging advanced algorithms and intelligent pattern recognition, these solutions enable businesses to tailor data quality rules to their specific requirements, ensuring that data meets the necessary standards.

Validating and Standardizing Data

With a clear understanding of data quality, the next step is implementing robust data validation and standardization processes. Data quality solutions provide a comprehensive suite of tools to cleanse, standardize, and deduplicate data, ensuring that information is consistent, accurate, and ready for analysis. By integrating these capabilities, organizations can improve data insights and make more informed, data-driven decisions.

The Importance of Data Governance

While data quality is the foundation for reliable and trustworthy information, data governance provides the overarching framework to ensure that data is effectively managed, secured, and leveraged across the enterprise. Data governance encompasses a range of policies, processes, and technologies that enable organizations to define data ownership, establish data-related roles and responsibilities, and enforce data-related controls and compliance.

Unlocking the Power of Metadata Management

Metadata management is central to effective data governance. Solutions like Actian’s Zeenea Data Discovery Platform provide a centralized hub for cataloging, organizing, and managing metadata across an organization’s data ecosystem. These platforms enable enterprises to create a comprehensive, 360-degree view of their data assets and associated relationships by connecting to a wide range of data sources and leveraging advanced knowledge graph technologies.

Driving Compliance and Risk Mitigation

In today’s increasingly regulated business landscape, data governance is critical in ensuring compliance with industry standards and data privacy regulations. Robust data governance frameworks, underpinned by powerful metadata management capabilities, empower organizations to implement effective data controls, monitor data usage, and mitigate the risk of data breaches and non-compliance.

The Synergy Between Data Quality and Data Governance

While data quality and governance are distinct disciplines, they are inextricably linked and interdependent. Robust data quality underpins the effectiveness of data governance, ensuring that the policies, processes, and controls are applied to data to extract reliable, trustworthy information. Conversely, a strong data governance framework helps maintain and continuously improve data quality, creating a virtuous cycle of data-driven excellence.

With a governance plan and the right data platform, organizations can streamline data discovery and provide quick access to data. Coupled with data quality assurance, this approach ensures that users can access trusted data and use it to make informed decisions that drive business success.

As organizations embrace transformative technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), the need for reliable, high-quality data becomes even more pronounced. Data governance and quality work to ensure that the data feeding these advanced analytics solutions is accurate, complete, and fit-for-purpose, unlocking the full potential of these emerging technologies to drive strategic business outcomes.

In the age of data-driven transformation, the synergistic relationship between data quality and data governance is a crucial competitive advantage. By seamlessly integrating these two pillars of data management, organizations can unlock unprecedented insights, enhance operational efficiency, and position themselves for long-term success. 

The Cornerstone of Effective Data Governance: Metadata Management

Metadata management lies at the heart of any successful data governance strategy. Platforms like Zeenea’s data discovery solution serve as a centralized hub, meticulously cataloging and organizing metadata across an organization’s entire data ecosystem. By leveraging cutting-edge knowledge graph technologies, these platforms enable enterprises to construct a comprehensive, 360-degree view of their data assets and understand the intricate web of relationships between them.

Imagine a manufacturing company with operations across multiple continents. With a robust metadata management system in place, it can instantly trace the origin of a faulty component, understand its impact on the supply chain, and initiate corrective measures—all in a matter of minutes rather than days or weeks.

Navigating the Regulatory Landscape: Compliance and Risk Mitigation

Data governance has become a non-negotiable aspect of operations in today’s increasingly regulated business environment. A well-implemented data governance framework, supported by powerful metadata management capabilities, empowers organizations to:

• Implement effective data controls.
• Monitor data usage patterns.
• Mitigate the risk of costly data breaches.
• Ensure compliance with industry standards and data privacy regulations.

Consider the financial services sector, where regulatory compliance is paramount. A leading bank reported a 35% reduction in compliance-related incidents after implementing a comprehensive data governance program. This saved millions of dollars in potential fines and significantly enhanced customer trust and brand reputation.

Streamlining Data Discovery and Access

A well-structured governance plan acts as a catalyst, streamlining data discovery and providing swift access to critical information. When coupled with rigorous data quality assurance, this approach ensures that users can access trusted data and leverage it to make informed decisions that drive business success.

“In the manufacturing sector, we’ve seen companies reduce their product development cycles by up to 30% simply by improving data accessibility and quality,” notes a leading industry analyst. “This level of agility can be the difference between market leadership and obsolescence in today’s fast-paced business environment.”

Fueling the AI and ML Revolution

A Fortune 500 financial services firm recently attributed a 20% increase in the accuracy of their fraud detection models to improvements in their data quality and governance practices. This saved millions in potential losses and enhanced customer experience by reducing false positives.

The Competitive Edge: Integrating Data Quality and Governance

In the age of data-driven transformation, the synergistic relationship between data quality and data governance is more than just a best practice – it’s a crucial competitive advantage. By seamlessly integrating these two pillars of data management, organizations can:

• Unlock unprecedented insights.
• Enhance operational efficiency.
• Drive innovation across the enterprise.
• Position themselves for long-term success in an increasingly data-centric world.

As we look to the future, it’s clear that organizations that prioritize this integration lead their industries, make more intelligent decisions, and deliver superior value to their customers and stakeholders.

Need help getting started with a data quality and governance initiative? Actian has the expertise and data products you need for success. Talk to our experts.

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