Big data analytics vendor Actian today announced the availability of customer-friendly pricing options that render it easier for customers to take advantage of its analytics platform for Apache Hadoop. Actian’s latest pricing options feature “capacity-based and subscription models” in addition to a Right to Deploy option that confers an expanded range of flexibility regarding deployment options for the Actian Analytics Platform. The Actian Analytics Platform delivers actionable business intelligence and advanced data visualization for Hadoop-based data that takes advantage of the platform’s proprietary predictive analytics algorithms and low latency. Moreover, the Actian Analytics platform’s Hadoop SQL Edition provides a SQL compliant Hadoop analytics platform that allows users to perform data discovery, data profiling and analytics via SQL in contrast to MapReduce. As of today’s announcement, Actian’s Right to Deploy option allows customers unlimited usage of the platform for a period of one, two or three years in addition to the right to use whatever has been deployed, forever. The Right to Deploy choice represents a particularly attractive option for customers that anticipate significant expansions in their business that dictate the need for enhanced infrastructure and application scalability. Moreover, the Right to Deploy option gives customers freedom from vendor lock-in by empowering customers to use their deployments whether they continue to partner with Actian or choose another vendor for their Hadoop analytics needs. Actian’s simplified platform pricing offers some of the greatest flexibility regarding Big Data analytics in the industry, in a red hot space marked by an increasing number of vendors large and small. That said, few vendors have streamlined and simplified the process of operationalizing Big Data analytics in a way that lays out programmatic approaches to obtaining meaningful analytics on Hadoop that vary in conjunction with the specific use case in mind. Expect increasing competition in the Hadoop analytics space to drive more and more vendors to differentiate themselves from the pack, although the main task, for the industry at large, consists of delivering a turnkey solution for big data analytics featuring machine learning-based, best practice recommendations for extracting meaningful analytics from massive, ever increasing amounts of data.
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