Actian has recently released its new Actian Analytics Platform (blogged about here) to deliver scale, parallelism, advanced analytics etc. Following on from this they announced a new offering, Clear Path. The Clear Path Program is designed to provide blueprints to help customers adopt this platform and deliver “transformational value”. Clear Path Analytics Blueprints package up Actian’s analytic expertise (from their CoE) to jumpstart analytic projects.
Each blueprint is a validated approach to some real-world big data problem (something that their CoE team has been asked to help with). They contain a set of steps and analytic workflows that develop advanced analytics using both traditional and newer data sources. The blueprints are backed by the Actian Analytics Platform, developed by Actian’s own data scientists and should help clients get faster time to value as well as improved accuracy/additional insight.
Initially they announced a set of 7 analytic blueprints focused on customer analytics – customer profile, lifetime value, micro segmentation, next best action, campaign optimization, churn analysis, market basket analysis. As part of the program, Actian offers a blueprint that lays out the methodology, a workflow the customer can use with their own data and a workshop to apply the blueprints to the customer’s unique problems. These workshops and any other help the customer needs are delivered by Actian’s existing analytics CoE. Each of these blueprints contains elements for connecting to variety of data sources/data types (Hadoop logs, ERP systems, weblogs, customer records etc), the ability to analyze this data to extract analytic insight about customers (who is likely to churn, who will respond etc) and then act on this (by generating SQL or PMML for the analytic models that can be embedded in the database/Hadoop infrastructure or target system).
The blueprints lay out the methodology and workflows that customers can use but by offering the 2-day workshop, Actian is able to operationalize these blueprints. For instance, a blueprint might identify the point in the process where say, Point of Sale data should be brought in and might identify the typical approach for getting that data and suitable elements of the platform to access and manage that data. In the workshop the specifics of the customer’s particular POS system, its API, etc., can be worked out and plugged into the workflow. Each workshop generally handles one blueprint though there is overlap as more blueprints are added.
Clear Path is being adopted by a number of Actian’s SI partners who can customize the blueprints. These partners are generally focused on a specific vertical or business domains, providing a focus that allows a deeper understanding of the problem.
Future plans include other verticals or domain areas and a set of blueprints within these. Healthcare is the most likely next area.
More details available on Actian, including the Actian Analytics Platform and the Clear Path Program. Actian is one of the vendors in our Decision Management Systems Platform Technologies
Comments on this entry are closed.