Actian Corp. is shaking up its product lineup to address the changes taking place in the analytics market.

The highlight of its announcement today is a new database released into general availability that blends two of the company’s most important products into a single package. Ingres, the first component, is a transactional database designed to handle everyday data management tasks, while the other is Actian’s speedy Vector X-100 analytics engine. A spokesperson said that the combination of the two “will solve the industry-wide dilemma of delivering real-time analyzed data.”

In more practical terms, the platform can streamline analytics activities by removing the need to handle different operations on separate systems. With Actian X, as the company calls the software, a user could look up sales data from the past 24 hours in the same place where they investigate long-term revenue trends. This centralization also means that analytical queries are executed against the latest data, a luxury that doesn’t exist in traditional environments where the transactional store runs on a standalone basis and data is only synced periodically. 

Not having to manually keep data synchronized also makes things easier for the information technology department. Consolidating everything into a single system removes the need to maintain two separate database deployments, which streamlines many management tasks while reducing the amount of work involved.

These features are set to pit Actian against several other database providers. SAP SE claims that its HANA store can likewise support both transactional and analytical operations, while a startup called MemSQL Inc. has put forth a similar value proposition. The latter firm has raised more than $78 million in funding from a group of investors that includes actor Ashton Kutcher.

One of the ways Actian hopes to stand out from the pack is by offering various value-added services alongside its database. One of the newest additions is DataCloud Backup, which was unveiled today and lets customers keep copies of their information in the cloud to prepare against outages. 

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