from DSSResources.comHigh performance Teradata 12® empowers front-line employeesLAS VEGAS, Nevada, October 8, 2007 -— If knowledge is power, why are so many front-line employees powerless? The answer: The lack of relevant information to make better business decisions. Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC) today announced the launch of Teradata 12, an innovative, advanced database that delivers traditional data warehousing for strategic planning, along with usable intelligence to front-line operations throughout the enterprise. Teradata 12 offers new functionality, innovations and improved performance that makes the system easy to deploy and manage, from entry level to an advanced data warehouse. Teradata 12 increases Teradata's market leadership in Active Enterprise Intelligence, the process of delivering strategic and operational intelligence on the same data warehouse utilizing both historical and up-to-the-minute enterprise data, including: Strategic intelligence — Traditional data warehousing supporting knowledge workers, managers, and back office workers who plan and manage the business. Operational intelligence — Supplying the front lines of the organization with the same valuable data by delivering intelligence via operational applications, e-commerce websites, employee portals, mobile and point-of-sale devices. This enables front-line employees, customers, partners, and suppliers to make smarter, more consistent, fact-based decisions. "The best investment a company can make is to raise the intelligence of the entire enterprise, including operational applications," said Scott Gnau, chief development officer, Teradata Corporation. "Many companies run their businesses on ERP applications, like supply chain, financial management, and human resources. However, they raise their company's intelligence with Teradata." Teradata 12 includes: Teradata Database 12, Teradata Tools and Utilities 12, and professional and consulting services accompanied by application integration and partnerships. Teradata 12 is the company's twelfth major database release. Teradata 12 is supported by the Teradata 5500 Server that provides Teradata customers with up to a 75 percent reduction in electricity usage for the same capability data warehouse (as compared to Teradata servers of three to five years ago). This savings of kilowatt-hours by one typical Teradata system equals the power used by 40 US homes in one year. "My recommendation to chief executives and chief information officers seeking to drive intelligence deep into their enterprise is to look for a vendor that has the capability to extend the support for decision-making beyond corporate management to all functions across the organization, maximizing both operational and strategic decisions," said Donald Feinberg, vice president and distinguished analyst, Gartner, Inc. "To deliver this level of data warehouse; solution the vendor must be able to provide extreme service levels in the areas of performance, concurrent users, scalability, data freshness and system availability, while managing both operational and strategic workloads." Infusing Intelligence to Front-line Operations The launch of Teradata 12 makes it easier for companies in all industries to build a fact-based corporate culture where data is a competitive asset. Teradata 12 makes it easier to deliver relevant information to front-line employees such as a retail cashiers, bank tellers, call center representatives, gate agents, and supply chain workers. Using a combination of historical data, analytics, and up-to-the-minute data, front-line employees can switch from making decisions based on assumptions and guesswork to decisions based on facts and corporate strategy. "The best part of delivering facts and insights to front-line employees and consumers is that they consistently make smarter decisions. A second benefit is that companies can achieve this goal by leveraging existing investments. Advanced data warehousing doesn't have to be hard or expensive. By using Teradata 12, companies can make thousands of operational decisions per minute — or per second - smarter. Every chief executive officer in the world is searching for ways to align with corporate strategy and improve operational excellence. Teradata customers are doing it," said Gnau. Delivering a Single View of the Business With Teradata 12, the strategic and operational applications can access the same set of integrated, accurate, and timely data. Data integration helps align the operations with the strategic goals of the company based on the same facts, measurements, and view of the business. For example, the call center, marketing, and sales agents can all use the same customer facts whenever contact is made. Marketing and procurement can see the same supplier scorecard. Many companies build a database or data mart for the marketing department, one for finance, and then additional marts for the customer call center, website, and the local retail outlet. Each of which needs it own data, funding, hardware, application development, security and on-going maintenance. The better approach is to serve these multiple user groups with the same core data providing a 360-degree view of the organization. According to Gnau, "Based on innovations incorporated in Teradata 12 software and depending upon each customer's implementation of the new advanced features, we anticipate that they can achieve up to a 30 percent performance improvement over previous versions." Driving Innovation and Performance Teradata 12 incorporates new innovations for both strategic and operational intelligence. Many of the new features in Teradata 12 were recommended by Teradata customers who lead their industry in the use of data for competitive advantage. A few of the innovations in Teradata 12 include: Elimination of Data Scanning — Many vendors focus on brute force to improve scan rates on rows and rows of data. Teradata's approach has always been to eliminate the need to scan data whenever possible. Teradata introduced a self-managed feature called Partition Primary Index three years ago, which allows a table to be partitioned by one of its attributes such as date. A simple question such as "give me sales this week vs. sales this week last year" may require scanning two years of history to answer the question. By partitioning on date by week, the optimizer would now scan only two weeks of data, eliminating the need to scan the other 102 weeks of data. With new Multi-Level Partitioning, Teradata takes it a step further and partitions on additional attributes such as state or product. For the same question asked above by state, such as California, Teradata only scans rows that now qualify by California within those two weeks. Testing has shown performance improvements up to 30 percent once the customer partitions the table with Multi-Level Partitioning. Consistent / Predictable Response — The decathlon of stress tests for any data warehouse is to support complex reporting, fast inquiries, data mining, and continuous data loading, all simultaneously in one database. This capability is called mixed workload management and ensures tasks are executed based on business priorities or established service level agreements, not on a first-come-first-served basis. Teradata 12 adds "event-driven" automation making the system easier to manage and more responsive to changing workloads. Teradata is the only company offering this unique event-driven mixed workload management approach. Smarter Query Execution — The Teradata 12 Optimizer works within the database like a travel agent who arranges trips that take advantage of the best route while addressing the challenges of traffic and layovers. In addition to efficient routing, Teradata 12 Optimizer automatically takes poorly written queries and rewrites them making them better, smarter and faster. Complex reports and detailed queries run up to 30 percent faster, which enables employees to spend less time waiting and more time working. The Teradata Optimizer also helps customers get more results out of their existing systems. A majority of these performance accelerators are transparent upon installation, requiring little or no effort from the customer to achieve the benefits. Joining Forces with Industry Leaders Teradata partners with leading software vendors to offer powerful data warehousing solutions to customers. The following partners are testing their software for compatibility with Teradata 12: Ab Initio, Atanasoft, BEZ Systems, Business Objects, CA, Cognos, Embarcadero Technologies, ETI (Evolutionary Technologies International, Inc.), GoldenGate Software, IBM DataMirror, IBM Information Server, Informatica Corporation, KXEN, Inc., MicroStrategy® Incorporated, Oracle Corporation, Protegrity Corporation, Scorecard Systems, Inc., Ward Analytics Ltd., and Wherescape Software. "Informatica and Teradata have a tradition of working together to support our customers who are striving to boost the intelligence of their enterprises," said James Markarian, Informatica's chief technology officer. "Informatica PowerCenter, with its Push Down Optimization feature, enables us to leverage the power of the Teradata Database engine to move vast quantities of data, quickly and efficiently, from applications across the enterprise into Teradata. To meet the requirements of our customers, millions of rows of data a day may be moved and transformed or manipulated to fit business needs. Informatica's proven leadership in data integration optimizes the value of the Teradata Active Enterprise Intelligence strategy." Teradata 12 is currently available. About Teradata Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC) is the world's largest company focused on raising intelligence through data warehousing and enterprise analytics. Teradata is in more than 60 countries and on the Web at www.teradata.com. # # # Teradata is a trademark or registered trademark of Teradata Corporation in the United States and other countries. |