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April 12, 2018

HCL, Equity Investor Acquire Actian

Actian Corp., which staged a comeback last year with the introduction of a hybrid database and query engine, is being acquired by India’s HCL Technologies and an equity partner.

HCL and private investor Sumera Equity Partners said they are buying Actian in an all-cash deal valued at $330 million. Once the acquisition closes, HCL, Noida, India, will own 80 percent of the hybrid data management vendor based in Palo Alto, Calif. Sumera will control the other 20 percent, the partners said Thursday (April 12).

Actian bills its Vector platform as the world’s fastest columnar database. The buyers also acquire Actian’s hybrid cloud data integration platform along with its hybrid database for operations analytics applications.

Actian released its hybrid transaction-analytics platform last April, several months after the company reportedly exited the crowded analytical database market.

C Vijayakumar, president and CEO of HCL Technologies said the Actian acquisition would augment its future data management product and platform offerings. The multinational IT services vendor also will incorporate Actian’s hybrid database platforms into its current cloud-native and analytics offerings.

The buyers said Actian would continue to operate as a separate unit of HCL. Actian CEO Rohit De Souza will continue to head the new HCL subsidiary.

The deal allows Actian to “expand our worldwide customer base,” added Terence Garnett, managing director of the venture firm that is currently the majority owner of Actian.

The Action acquisition also illustrates how the big data sector is maturing from startups attracting large sums of venture capital to initial public offerings and industry consolidation as large global players seek to augment their analytics capabilities.

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