Actian, the data division of HCLSoftware, announced significant enhancements to its Data Intelligence Platform on June 24, 2025, embedding data contracts and governance-by-design into development workflows to ensure data reliability and accelerate AI-driven initiatives. This "data contract first" approach provides enterprises with full visibility and control over distributed data assets, from creation to consumption, fostering trust and scalability.
Actian’s "data contract first" principle integrates governance early in the data lifecycle using shift-left practices, ensuring data quality from the source. Data contracts define expectations and enforce compliance automatically, catching issues before they impact downstream processes. “The challenge of decentralized environments isn’t just managing data across domains – it’s ensuring quality and governance at scale,” said Emma McGrattan, CTO at Actian. This approach delivers reliable AI outcomes, reduces compliance risks, and lowers operational costs.
The platform enables individual domains to design and publish tailored data products into a federated data marketplace, with dedicated APIs automating registration within CI/CD pipelines. This reduces manual efforts and keeps data catalogs current, enhancing discoverability. The Ask AI feature, currently in beta, allows users to query data using natural language, leveraging the organization’s glossary to deliver context-aware results, making analytics accessible to non-technical users.
Supporting decentralized data ownership, the platform breaks down silos to foster collaboration across business and IT. Its federated knowledge graph-powered search engine ensures compliance while delivering relevant results. Combined with Actian Data Observability (set for global availability in June 2025), it provides complete data lineage and quality monitoring, ensuring data products adhere to contracts. This is critical for AI readiness, as only 4% of organizations are fully prepared for generative AI due to data infrastructure limitations.
Actian’s recent partnership with Databricks, announced June 3, 2025, integrates the platform with Unity Catalog, enhancing data visibility and governance across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. This aligns with industry trends, as ISG Software Research notes the growing need for robust data governance to support data democratization. The platform’s privacy capabilities, including data masking and anonymization, ensure compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, and PCI-DSS, facilitating secure data sharing.
Actian’s enhancements, building on its September 2024 acquisition of Zeenea, position it as a leader in data intelligence, enabling enterprises to manage complex data ecosystems and deliver AI-ready data with trust and efficiency.
Actian empowers enterprises to confidently manage and govern data at scale. Actian data management and data intelligence solutions help streamline complex data environments and accelerate the delivery of AI-ready data. Designed to be flexible, Actian solutions integrate seamlessly and perform reliably across on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments.
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