Get to Know Actian Zen

Actian Zen is a high-performance, embedded database management system designed for efficient data management in various applications, particularly IoT and edge computing. It offers several key features:

• High Performance: Optimized for real-time data processing and quick response times.
• Scalability: Can handle increasing data volumes and diverse endpoints.
• Reliability: Ensures data integrity and availability even in challenging environments.
• Security: Provides robust security features to protect sensitive data.
• Flexibility: Supports NoSQL and SQL data access.
• Easy Integration: Integrates with applications and devices using API.
• Low Maintenance: Minimal administrative overhead.

With more than 13,000 customers, Actian Zen has been utilized around the world across multiple industries to capture data generated by mobile devices, IoT sensors, edge gateways and even complex machinery, giving its users a very high level of confidence in reporting performance at the edge.

Putting Zen Through its Paces: The TPCx-IoT Benchmark

Actian has enjoyed terrific success with its Zen customer base, and while in turn, its customers have greatly benefited from Zen’s strong performance. At the same time, Actian wanted to have a third-party review, comparison, and benchmark report on the performance of the product itself alongside similar market offerings in an unbiased fashion. In October 2024, Actian commissioned the McKnight Consulting Group to run a TCPx-IoT benchmark against two of its key competitors; MongoDB and MySQL.

TPCx-IoT is a benchmark developed by the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) to measure the performance, scalability, and price-performance of IoT (Internet of Things) data ingestion systems. It simulates real-time data ingestion and processing from IoT devices, evaluating a system’s ability to handle large volumes of time-series data efficiently.

Key features of the TPCx-IoT benchmark include:

• Real-World Simulation: The benchmark simulates a realistic IoT scenario with a large
  number of devices generating data.
• Performance Metrics: It measures performance metrics like throughput (IoTps),
  latency, and price-performance.
• Vendor-Neutral: It provides a fair and objective comparison of different IoT data
  management solutions.
• Scalability Testing: It evaluates the system’s ability to handle increasing data volumes
  and device counts.

By using the TPCx-IoT benchmark, organizations can compare the performance of different IoT data management solutions and select the best solution for their specific needs.

Discussion of Results: Actian Zen is a Powerful IoT Engine

The results of the benchmark test showed that Actian Zen was far superior to its key competitors in two important areas: throughput and latency.

• Throughput: Actian Zen processes data significantly faster than other offerings, reaching up to 7,902 records per second compared to MongoDB’s at 2,099. MySQL lags far behind at 162 records per second. This means that Actian Zen has a throughput capability up to 50x the competition!
  
• Latency: Actian Zen consistently demonstrates the lowest latency (time taken to process each record) across various sensor configurations, displaying up to 650x lower latency than the competition. MySQL exhibits the highest latency.
  

According to the McKnight Consulting Group, “In our evaluation of various embedded databases, Actian Zen emerged as a very compelling solution for enterprise-grade IoT workloads.”

Given the importance of real-time data availability at the edge, it is critical that both throughput and latency performance is as strong as they can be, especially given the myriad use cases that exist throughout various industries where having a true, confident view of current endpoint performance is critical, be it within healthcare, logistics, transportation, or another industry. This proves why so many customers, like Global Shop Solutions and Taifun Software AG have confidence in Actian Zen and why so many other organizations are taking a closer look…

Next Steps: Get the Report!

Curious about the benchmark? Want to know more? Here’s how to get started:

• To read the full TPCx-IoT benchmark report from the McKnight Consulting Group, click here.
• To find out more about Zen, check out our website here.

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