Drawing on expert assistance

When you need more hands on deck, consider Teradata Operational Support.

by Scott Steinberg

Simply constructing a functional data warehouse is no longer sufficient; in today's volatile commercial environment, it's also essential that your enterprise run at peak efficiency at all times. To address this need, corporate leaders are turning to Teradata's Managed Services portfolio, which includes Operational Support.

"We're focused on ensuring that systems operate at maximum performance levels," explains Kevin Lewis, Teradata director of offer development and management. "This frees up more time so customers can concentrate on pursuing fundamental business objectives."

With ever-growing emphasis being placed on global applications and critical out-of-hours processes, 24/365 coverage has become an integral aspect of business activity. But the traditional on-call approach is no longer viable.

While database administrators can be found and trained in today's employment environment, many companies are simultaneously facing an ever-increasing demand for technology in business environments.

Workload for database administrators is increasing, given the emerging demand to leverage the business analysis stored in data warehouse technology throughout the enterprise. Yet there are only so many hours in a workweek—and that's without considering the time and staff resources needed to facilitate planned system activities such as regular maintenance and expansion. Even a handful of staff administrators could be stretched to the limit as a company's requirements on the data warehouse respond to meet corporate growth.

Your system's insurance policy
That's where Teradata's Operational Support services come in. On-site and remote database administration services and mentoring programs are now available, giving your company access to consultants whose goal is increasing your return on investment.

"Picture it as an insurance policy," says Teradata Services consultant Ben Davies. "No longer will you find yourself diverting internal resources, spending time training new hires or, heaven forbid, stuffing all your eggs into one basket."

Intimately familiar with Teradata platforms, the Operational Support group puts direct support for applications and system infrastructure at your fingertips, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Team members average 11 years of experience working with Teradata technologies and are completely accredited.

Staffers can monitor entire enterprises or ease the transition process as you build an on-site team. Operational Support engagements may last a few weeks, or they could provide a permanent complement to any corporation's core competencies.

Consider some of the benefits of using Teradata's Operational Support services for support and administration duties:

• Reduced overhead: You hire only the resources required to keep a system up and running.
• Easier startup: Deploying experienced Teradata engineers during implementations can eliminate trial-and-error development.
• Proactive planning: Minimize downtime and save money through capacity planning, integrity validation, data migration services, SQL optimization and systems monitoring.
• Smooth operations: Proven specialists in the field of data warehousing ensure your enterprise runs smoothly by monitoring incident management and observing system performance.
• Quicker response time: When dilemmas do arise, response times are faster—and so is issue resolution.
• Finely tuned workloads: Operational Support personnel can highlight periods of extreme usage and identify the most demanding users. You can then distribute resources evenly throughout the day, so one department won't sit idle while another initiates resource-intensive queries.
• Proactive expansion: In response to feedback from Teradata professionals, expansion may begin before gridlock strikes.
• Streamlined disaster recovery: Backup, archive and restoration services ensure smoother disaster recovery.
• Easier data migration: Professionals can walk you through the migration process should you need to shift information between platforms.
• Identifying opportunities: Operational Support personnel can help you identify where upgrades, new applications and other tools can maximize your database's potential.

In short, the Operational Support group takes precautions to ensure your enterprise meets and exceeds expectations.

"Increased system availability and performance levels are critical," says Lewis. "That's where we come in. We're dedicated to making improvements in these areas so businesses needn't waste valuable time fretting over small details."

Anticipating the unexpected
Several international firms are recognizing the value of personalized partnerships. Consider the case of a major North American retailer that wanted to know whether its system could sustain a certain performance level throughout a peak sales period.

Analysis by Teradata experts showed that unless significant upgrades were made beforehand, database outages would be unavoidable. The chain implemented changes much more quickly than would have been feasible in the midst of its busy season. As a result, it exceeded performance expectations.

A European IT service provider faced a different situation. Database administrators found themselves preoccupied in solving troubles that had piled up. Called in to advise, Teradata team members discovered certain users were consuming immense amounts of resources while researching specific data. These users were pointed toward tools that could retrieve the required information faster and with less drain on the database. Response times were slashed and performance improved.

As Teradata senior consultant Chris Bowman is fond of saying, "We're not the solution to a problem...we're the means of preventing it in the first place."

His advice: Consider your data warehouse as essential an asset as any other piece of equipment in your inventory and treat it as such. He insists it's a point that can't be understated.

"Many can't comprehend the true value of their systems until a crisis arises," Bowman says.

A comprehensive solution
Offering a turnkey answer for all your IT requirements, Teradata's Operational Support services cover every facet of the administration, support and services feature sets. Spend your time cultivating new business and promoting initiatives; let the experts deal with the day-to-day realities of overseeing a data warehouse.

"It's about getting the biggest bang for the buck," says Bowman. "The bottom line: We'll show you how to squeeze the most from your resources and make sure they're running at maximum capacity. The proposition pays for itself." T

A conversation with a Teradata Services consultant

Ben Davies helps customers find solutions that maximize the availability and performance of their Teradata Warehouses. Based in London, he assists Teradata customers with Teradata Warehouse management best practices and developing remote database administration services that fulfill the requirements of a global Teradata Warehouse. Q: How does remote database administration play into the operational support mix? A: It's an excellent alternative to the customer relying on in-house resources to provide these services. Our experts connect remotely to the Teradata system over a secure VPN. There's no muss or fuss, and we're able to make sure the system runs at top performance. I can't stress enough the importance of the database administration function—how well the job is done ultimately determines the performance, efficiency and overall value of a system. It's a critical component of business activity. Q: What does Teradata bring to the table? A: We've got experts intimately familiar with Teradata systems ready and waiting to serve, and we take a team approach to every scenario. It allows us to identify problems more quickly and solve them faster by combining resources...It also affords customers a scalable solution to any given problem. Q: Are there other good reasons for implementing Operational Support? A: Honestly, it can be very problematic for some customers to manage the day-to-day operation of a system. IT budgets are shrinking, and you have to protect against key-man dependencies. If you're off implementing new projects and no one's minding the store, so to speak, it's very hard to make sure a system's optimized. Besides, applications now run around the clock; you can't afford to just have one guy on call minding them. Q: What does the process look like? A: We start by undertaking a service management audit. We interview the current team, look at system infrastructure, drill down into database management, backup schedules, etc. It's important to understand the complexity of any given system. From there, it's a matter of weeks...we work with the client's IT services manager to get up and running. Q: And the service can be as holistic or non-intrusive as a client desires? A: Yes. We don't have to design these services as a direct replacement for in-house IT staff. We can also identify individual tasks that we'd be willing to take on simply to help alleviate workload from the current DBA team. Q: Can you give an example? A: Let's say you're busy making improvements to your data warehouse. You're not going to be able to deal with day-to-day tasks. If a batch fails or there are user problems, it can be cataclysmic. We'd provide cover for daily activities while you're minding higher-level projects. Q: You can also help prepare clients to handle these activities on their own, right? A: Certainly. We can always pick up some of the slack while training a DBA team that doesn't have the requisite skills to carry out performance or capacity analysis. In this case, we'd help get the client's in-house team up to speed. Q: How can I determine whether I'm a good candidate for these services? A: You'd be a good fit for the service if your Teradata system's importance has increased over time, yet you don't have the infrastructure or people in place to support it. You'd also be a good fit for it if your data warehouse is moving to a global infrastructure; it isn't sufficient anymore to just have a single DBA available on an on-call basis. They can't provide effective support 24 hours a day. If there's a focus on system performance or if your DBA team is overloaded with work and constantly getting pulled into new projects, you're a prime candidate. I'd also recommend relying on us during any system's initial implementation process. Teradata experts can get your team up to speed while everything's being installed.

Scott Steinberg's articles have appeared in Wired, Popular Science and Rolling Stone.