Teradata Corporation is an American computer company that sells database software for data warehouses and analytic applications, including Big Data. Its products are meant to consolidate data from different sources and make the data available for analysis. Formerly a division of NCR Corporation, Teradata was incorporated in 1979 and separated from NCR in October 2007.[2] Teradata is led by Mike Koehler, the former senior vice president of NCR.[3] Teradata's headquarters is located in Miamisburg, Ohio.
Introduction
Teradata is an enterprise software company that develops and sells a relational database management system (RDBMS) with the same name. In February 2011, Gartner ranked Teradata as one of the leading companies in data warehousing and enterprise analytics.[4] Teradata was a division of the NCR Corporation, which acquired Teradata on February 28, 1991. Teradata's revenues in 2005 were almost $1.5 billion with an operating margin of 21%.[3] On January 8, 2007, NCR announced that it would spin-off Teradata as an independently traded company,[5] and this spin-off was completed October 1 of the same year, with Teradata trading under the NYSE stock symbol TDC.[6]
The Teradata product is referred to as a "data warehouse system" and stores and manages data. The data warehouses use a "shared nothing architecture," which means that each server node has its own memory and processing power. Adding more servers and nodes increases the amount of data that can be stored. The database software sits on top of the servers and spreads the workload among them.[7] Teradata sells applications and software to process different types of data. In 2010, Teradata added text analytics to track unstructured data, such as word processor documents, and semi-structured data, such as spreadsheets.[8]
Teradata's product can be used for business analysis. Data warehouses can track company data, such as sales, customer preferences, product placement, etc.[7]
In 2010, the Ethisphere Institute named Teradata as one of the "World's Most Ethical Companies."[9]
History
Timeline information taken from Teradata company history unless otherwise cited.[10]
Incorporated in 1979 in Brentwood, CA by Dr. Jack E. Shemer, Dr. Philip M. Neches, Walter E. Muir, Jerold R. Modes, William P. Worth, and Carroll Reed.
1980: Enough funding for a research and development team.
1999: Teradata customer has world's largest database with 130 terabytes.
2000: NCR acquires Ceres Integrated Solutions and reconfigures their customer relationship management software into Teradata CRM.[16]
2000: NCR acquires Stirling Douglas Group and adds its Demand Chain Management software to list of Teradata applications.[17]
2002: Teradata Warehouse 7.0 launches.
2003: More than 120 companies migrate from Oracle Corporation to Teradata after Oracle-to-Teradata migration program.[18]
2003: Teradata University is created. Nearly 170 universities in 27 countries included in network.
2004: Teradata creates partnerships with SAP[19] and Siebel Systems, Inc.[20]
2005: Teradata launches Teradata Warehouse 8.1.
2005: Teradata acquires DecisionPoint software[21] and rebrands it as Teradata Decision Experts.
2005: Teradata adds Linux as an operating system choice for enterprise-class data warehouses.
2006: Teradata launches Enterprise Master Data Management Solution.
2006: Microsoft and Teradata collaborate on business intelligence application.[22]
2007: NCR announces that NCR and Teradata will separate into two independent businesses.[23]
2007: Intelligent Enterprise magazine names Teradata the best global data warehouse-business intelligence appliance vendor.
2007: Teradata partners with DFA Capital Management, Inc.[24]
2007: Agilent Technologies and Teradata established the first partnership between a data warehouse company and an instrument measurement company in order to integrate network and customer data for telecommunications industry.[25]
2007: Teradata University network consists of 850 universities in 70 countries.
2007: On Oct 1, Teradata completes spin-off from NCR and is traded as its own stock. Mike Koehler becomes the CEO of Teradata.[26]
2007: Teradata launches Teradata 12
2007: Teradata announces partnership with SAS involving further technical integration of their respective products and coordinated marketing, sales, and services activities.[27]
2008: Teradata Purpose Built Platform Family launches.
2008: Teradata Petabyte Power Players announced: a group of five Teradata customers with data warehouse environments exceeding one petabyte.[29]
2008: Teradata Labs becomes the first to unveil a working prototype demonstrating the innovative use of solid state disk (SSD) drives in a data warehouse environment at the 2008 Teradata PARTNERS User Group Conference & Expo.[30]
2008: Teradata Accelerate launches
2009: Forrester Research ranks Teradata as number 1 amongst enterprise data warehousing.
2009: Teradata announces that database administrators can now rewind Teradata Viewpoint monitoring applications and portlets to check database activity or performance at a specific point in time.
2009: Teradata ranked among BusinessWeek’s “InfoTech 100,"[31] the world’s best-performing tech companies” and Fortune’s 1000.[32]
2009: Teradata Database 13 releases
2010: Teradata introduces Teradata Extreme Data Appliance 1600.
2010: Teradata is named “one of the world’s most ethical companies” by The Ethisphere Institute.[33]
2011: Gartner names Teradata as the global leader in data warehousing databases.[36]
2011: Teradata adds Aprimo Real-Time Interaction Manager to its Marketing Solution suite.
2012: Teradata acquires eCircle, a direct marketing company with focus on email
2013: Teradata is named a leader in Gartner's Data Warehouse DBMS Magic Quadrant in February 2013 [37]
Fortune magazine named Teradata “Product of the Year” in 1986. Over the next four years channel connections to IBM MVS and UnivacOS 1100 mainframes were introduced, and a Teradata system over one terabyte (a trillion bytes) went live.[11]
Teradata systems can be used as back-up for one another during downtime. The systems balance the work load across themselves.[39]
Active enterprise data warehouse
Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse is the platform that runs the Teradata Database, with added data management tools and data mining software.
The data warehouse differentiates between “hot and cold” data – meaning that the warehouse puts data that is not often used in a slower storage section.[40] As of October 2010, Teradata uses Xeon 5600 processors for the server nodes.[41]
Teradata Database 13.10 was announced in 2010 as the company’s database software for storing and processing data.[42][43]
Teradata Database 14 was sold as the upgrade to 13.10 in 2011 and runs multiple data warehouse workloads at the same time.[44] It includes column-store analyses.[45]
Teradata Integrated Analytics is a set of tools for data analysis that resides inside the data warehouse.[46]
The Teradata Disaster Recovery Solution is automation and tools for data recovery and archiving. Customer data can be stored in an offsite recovery center.[48]
Platform family
Teradata Platform Family is a set of products that include the Teradata Data Warehouse, Database, and a set of analytic tools. The platform family is marketed as smaller and less expensive than the other Teradata solutions.[49]
Teradata holds an annual user group conference and expo known as Teradata PARTNERS with keynote industry speakers, educational sessions led by customers and other vendors.[69] The Teradata Partners Conference has been an annual event since 1985.[70] The conference involves lectures and speeches on technical and business topics and announcements about new products.[71]
Teradata and Big Data
Teradata began to associate itself with the term, “Big Data” in 2010. CTO, Stephen Brobst, attributes the rise of big data to “new media sources, such as social media.”[72] The increase in semi-structured and unstructured data gathered from online interactions prompted Teradata to form the “Petabyte club” in 2011 for its heaviest big data users.[73]
The rise of big data resulted in many traditional data warehousing companies updating their products and technology.[74] For Teradata, big data prompted the acquisition of Aster Data Systems in 2011 for the company’s MapReduce capabilities and ability to store and analyze semi-structured data.[75]
Public interest in big data resulted in a 13% increase in Teradata’s global sales.[73]
Competition
Teradata's main competitors are similar products from vendors such as Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and Sybase IQ. Also, competitors include data warehouse appliance vendors such as Netezza[76] (acquired in November 2010 by IBM), DATAllegro (acquired in August 2008 by Microsoft), ParAccel, Greenplum (acquired in July 2010 by EMC), and Vertica Systems (acquired in February 2011 by HP), and from packaged data warehouse applications such as SAP and Kalido.
Recognition
In 2009, Forrester Research issued a report, "The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Data Warehouse Platform," by James Kobielus,[77] rating Teradata the industry's number one enterprise data warehouse platform in the "Current Offering" category.
Marketing research company Gartner Group placed Teradata in the "leaders quadrant" in its 2009, 2010, and 2012 reports, "Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems".[78][79]
Teradata is the most popular data warehouse DBMS in the DB-Engines database ranking.[80]
In 2010, Teradata was listed in Fortune’s annual list of Most Admired Companies.[81]
Philanthropy
The Teradata Cares program is Teradata’s main philanthropic effort and community relations program. Teradata establishes volunteer efforts in communities with Teradata offices and encourages employees to participate at these programs by giving them four days a year to volunteer during working hours.[82] As of 2010, Teradata Cares was active in 45 cities in 14 countries.[83]
Teradata Cares programs include youth education programs to promote science and technology, bike and blanket donations,[82] and participation in already established programs such as Junior Achievement and United Way.[84]
Teradata has a supplier diversity program that designates a minimum of 3 to 5% of spending on minority, women, veteran, or small business vendors.[85]
