Actian Corporation ("Actian"), a leader in enterprise-grade analytical solutions, announced today that it is working closely with Microsoft to deliver Actian Analytics Database - Matrix and Actian Vector in Hadoop (VectorH) advanced analytics products on Microsoft Azure Marketplace. Through collaboration with Microsoft Corp., Actian will make the performance of Actian Matrix and VectorH available for rapid deployment on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

The Actian integrated architecture allows customers to query native Apache Hadoop file formats from Azure and offers a single high-performance architecture spanning on-premises, hybrid, and public clouds. By choosing Actian Matrix and VectorH in the Azure Marketplace, organizations will be able to easily provision and deploy an enterprise-grade cloud platform to deliver rich analytics and reports using the standard ANSI-SQL they know and the business analysis tools that they trust.

"Business managers value Actian Matrix and VectorH because they draw data from their systems to deliver the analysis and actionable results they need in minutes rather than days or weeks," said Steve Shine, chief executive officer of Actian. "We are excited to be making this processing power available on the proven Azure platform so that more managers will be able to take advantage of advanced analytics to move their businesses forward."

Designed for the demands of massive data volumes and significant analytic complexity, Actian Matrix on Azure will provide unrivaled performance and scalability. Delivering transaction results that are routinely 50 times faster than those from conventional RDBMSs, Actian Matrix can scale to accelerate query performance and analyze risks faster for a more comprehensive model of the business.

VectorH has opened Hadoop to millions of SQL programmers worldwide and links to popular SQL-based business intelligence tools.  VectorH on Azure will bring native Hadoop integration to cloud solutions that deliver transaction results up to 30 times faster than Apache Hive or Impala, and manage incremental updates to keep pace with business transactions.

"Actian customers soon will be able to use the Microsoft Azure Marketplace to quickly provision and set up an analytics platform that can scale up and down as needed, offering a faster and more flexible way to use Matrix and VectorH without the overhead and resources required to manage it on-premises," said Nicole Herskowitz, senior director of product marketing, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Corp. "Actian on Microsoft Azure will help IT executives and business managers make use of the streams of business data that they see every day to know their customers better, identify new business trends, and recommend new products and messages."

For more information on deploying Actian Matrix and Actian VectorH in Hadoop on Microsoft Azure, visit http://portal.azure.com