Latest news with #Actian
Winnipeg Free Press
23-05-2025
- Business
- Winnipeg Free Press
Province says six deals with U.S. firms necessary, despite trade war
The Manitoba government has defended a series of costly deals with U.S. companies, saying it had no choice but to sign the contracts in question. The Opposition Tories have tabled the details of six deals this week that challenge the NDP's pledge to buy local amid the trade war with the United States. They show the province has agreed to pay more than $4.5 million to six companies that are headquartered on American soil in recent months. RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS Progressive Conservative Leader Obby Khan accused the government of failing to do 'the heavy work behind the scenes' and find Canadian alternatives. Each contract was issued or updated after President Donald Trump followed through on his threat to impose 25 per cent tariffs on March 4, as per the province's contract disclosure database. All of the vendors sell software or other information technology services, many of which government officials said could not be sourced elsewhere. Progressive Conservative Leader Obby Khan accused the government of failing to do 'the heavy work behind the scenes' and find Canadian alternatives. 'We are exposing Wab Kinew and this NDP government for what they really are — smoke and mirrors,' Khan told reporters after question period on Thursday. Three of the contracts were direct awards, meaning vendors in Canada and elsewhere could not bid on them. The largest is worth $1.8 million. It was signed with Actian, a software development firm in California. The other two involve First Databank, a Washington, D.C.-based company that runs drug and medical device databases, and the Iowa department of transportation. Both were for computer services and amounted to about $150,000 each. New Technology Minister Mike Moroz said the province wants to give preferential treatment to Canadian suppliers and introduced legislation to cement that goal, but it is not always possible. 'In order to ensure Manitobans can access the services they currently rely on, some contracts have been extended with American firms,' Moroz said in a statement. Bill 42, introduced earlier this session, establishes a 'buy Canadian policy' for government purchases. The major contract with Actian was a renewal to ensure continued operation of existing software for essential services, Moroz said. The minister indicated a recent $1.8-million deal with Texas-based Aurigo Software Technologies was initially awarded prior to the new direction on procurement practises. A spokesperson for his office indicated a $206,000 top-up to the existing contract with EAP Global was to continue helping post-secondary institutes administer online courses. Provincial officials were preparing to release more information about the remaining three contracts to the Free Press prior to a media scrum with Kinew on Thursday. Both the bureaucracy and cabinet communications teams were directed not to release further details after the premier spoke to reporters — despite the fact he did not offer any answers. Kinew dodged more than a dozen questions about why his government is continuing to issue major contracts to U.S. firms. He insisted the province is buying Canadian and repeatedly mentioned Khan in his replies to accuse the PC leader of supporting Trump. Khan called the premier's behaviour 'embarrassing.' Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. 'Manitobans deserve better,' he said. '(Reporters) ask legitimate questions and he is giving you lies for his answers. It's shameful.' Earlier in the day, Trade Minister Jamie Moses introduced a bill that would proclaim June 1 as 'Buy Manitoba, Buy Canadian Day.' Bill 47 establishes new rules that would reduce red tape to increase trade with other governments in Canada that are reducing barriers as well. — with files from Carol Sanders Maggie MacintoshEducation reporter Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the Free Press. Originally from Hamilton, Ont., she first reported for the Free Press in 2017. Read more about Maggie. Funding for the Free Press education reporter comes from the Government of Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative. Every piece of reporting Maggie produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Cision Canada
12-05-2025
- Business
- Cision Canada
New Actian Data Observability Delivers Proactive Data Quality for AI Innovation
Provides complete visibility across complex, modern data stacks to build reliable, AI-ready data , May 12, 2025 /CNW/ -- Actian, the data division of HCLSoftware, today launches Actian Data Observability, which leverages AI and machine learning for comprehensive data quality monitoring as well as anomaly detection and resolution. By ensuring high data quality and trustworthiness, Actian helps enterprises accelerate AI initiatives, increase the speed of innovation, and reduce risk. Traditional data quality approaches lack real-time capabilities and struggle to keep pace with the exponential growth in data volume and velocity. Actian Data Observability addresses these limitations, providing comprehensive and continuous monitoring across the entire data ecosystem. Gartner ® statistics confirm the growing importance of data observability, noting that "By 2026, 50% of enterprises implementing distributed data architectures will have adopted data observability tools to improve visibility over the state of the data landscape, up from less than 20% in 2024."¹ "Enterprises depend on data to power decisions, drive AI initiatives and meet regulatory demands—but too often face unreliable data, hidden quality issues and ballooning cloud costs," said Emma McGrattan, CTO at Actian. "Actian Data Observability gives teams the visibility and confidence they need to trust their data, reduce risk and control spend—turning data from a liability into a competitive advantage." Unlike reactive, rule-based approaches, Actian Data Observability defines and runs thousands of data quality rules concurrently across the entire data landscape. Monitoring includes critical dimensions such as freshness, volume, schema drift, distribution patterns and custom business rules. ML-driven anomaly detection automatically identifies outliers, drifts and unexpected patterns, while providing valuable root-cause analysis suggestions to facilitate faster resolution. Actian Data Observability scales to connect any dataset in the ecosystem so enterprises can maintain data integrity without compromising performance or creating bottlenecks in their data pipelines. With this solution, Actian optimizes cloud resource consumption without data sampling, ensuring predictable cloud costs and preventing unexpected cost surges. Built for enterprises operating complex, high-volume modern data stacks, Actian Data Observability supports the following use cases: Data pipeline efficiency: Enable teams to quickly deliver reliable AI-ready data products and insights by addressing quality issues closer to the source and as early as possible in the lifecycle using the shift-left philosophy in data that prevents issues from propagating downstream. AI lifecycle monitoring: Ensure safety and compliance of AI applications by validating quality, freshness and relevance of training data and retrieval-augmented generation knowledge sources while enabling rapid intervention. Safe self-service analytics: Empower analysts and other consumers to independently assess reliability before using data with real-time health indicators directly embedded within data catalogs, BI tools and discovery platforms. Built on an open architecture, Actian Data Observability integrates seamlessly with cloud data warehouses, data lakes, lakehouses and streaming platforms. By isolating data quality workloads from production infrastructure, Actian prevents performance degradation and impact to business operations in production environments. For managing large analytical datasets, Actian provides a native Apache Iceberg integration to ensure accurate insights, quality checks and change tracking across systems. Additionally, to protect data security and privacy, Actian Data Observability accesses metadata and runs checks directly where data resides, eliminating the need for insecure or costly data copies. Actian Data Observability will be available globally in June 2025 and will be available as part of the Actian Data Intelligence Platform in the fall of 2025. For more information, review the " Quality Data, Reliable AI: Introducing Actian Data Observability" and " How to Achieve Complete Data Observability–Without Breaking the Bank" white paper. About Actian 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. Learn more about Actian, the data division of HCLSoftware, at 1 Gartner, Market Guide for Data Observability Tools, Melody Chien, Jason Medd, Lydia Ferguson, Michael Simone, 25 June 2024. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
