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Addressing challenges

MicroStrategy and Teradata continue to deliver industry-leading enterprise business intelligence and data warehousing solutions.

As demand for business intelligence (BI) continues to grow, so too do the challenges faced by system administrators. Managing large data volumes and delivering acceptable query performance are among the common challenges faced by data warehousing professionals today. These challenges are compounded by the ever-evolving needs of business users who demand interactive, Web-based data mining, ad-hoc query, data analysis and formatted reporting capabilities. At the same time, user populations are expanding beyond corporate boundaries to include suppliers, partners and customers. To address these challenges, BI professionals have turned to MicroStrategy and Teradata. The two companies have a long-standing relationship to serve the needs of organizations that require enterprise-grade BI and data warehousing solutions.

Teradata and MicroStrategy have been working together for more than a decade to deliver highly optimized technical integrations that leverage the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform and Teradata enterprise data warehouse (EDW) solutions. Companies around the world , such as Lowe’s Companies, Meredith Corporation and Charming Shoppes, use the combined solutions of MicroStrategy and Teradata to centralize and leverage their enterprise data with optimal speed and performance. The combination of the most recent release of MicroStrategy 8 and Teradata's active data warehouse capabilities enables customers to integrate intelligence throughout the enterprise to make better operational and strategic decisions at the point of contact or service.

MicroStrategy’s innovative BI technology serves the reporting, analysis and monitoring needs of leading companies worldwide. According to The OLAP Survey 5, conducted annually by Survey.com, and industry analyst Nigel Pendse, MicroStrategy had the highest customer loyalty of any of the products reviewed. In addition, MicroStrategy has been acknowledged by The OLAP Survey for the past five years as the best BI product for data scalability, as well as the top performer for Web deployment. The OLAP surveys are a comprehensive, independent survey of the BI market space and products. This year marks the fifth release of The OLAP Survey, which includes input from 2,100 organizations across 95 countries and 31 different industries.

For a complimentary summary of The OLAP Survey 5, with an emphasis on MicroStrategy’s rankings, visit: http://www.MicroStrategy.com/Company/OLAP_Survey5.asp.

To purchase the complete set of The OLAP 5 Survey results, visit: http://www.survey.com/olap.

"Teradata and MicroStrategy have a history of expertise that ensures the success and satisfaction of our customers. Our products have been engineered specifically to work well together and make it easy for Teradata customers to select our complementary business intelligence platform. Teradata and MicroStrategy share the powerful vision that corporations can significantly improve their productivity and efficiency with effective access to data and scalable analytical capabilities."
—Sanju K. Bansal, MicroStrategy Incorporated Chief Operating Officer

MicroStrategy and Teradata share a joint customer base of approximately 175 organizations. Nearly half of these joint customers are retailers, many of which leverage MicroStrategy with Teradata’s Retail Decisions enterprise analytics solution. The balance of joint customers spans a wide range of industries, including financial services, communications, manufacturing, transportation and government.

Partial List of Joint Customers

	Charming Shoppes, Inc.: >2TB, Teradata Database, 800 Users
	Cingular Wireless: 1TB, Teradata Database, 100 Users
	eBay: 12TB, Teradata Database, 300 Users
	Hudson's Bay Company: 2-3TB, Teradata Database, 5000 Users
	Lowe's Companies: 16TB, Teradata Database, >2000 Users
	Meredith Corporation: <250GB, Teradata Database, 100 Users
	METRO Group: 34TB, Teradata Database, 2500 Users

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Technical optimizations and performance
MicroStrategy has specifically optimized its BI platform for use with the Teradata Warehouse. MicroStrategy’s relational online analytical processing (ROLAP) engine leverages the processing power and data management capabilities of the Teradata Warehouse to achieve exceptional performance. Through the generation of Teradata-specific syntax, users enjoy the fastest run times for even the most complex queries. This unique approach to BI makes MicroStrategy a highly scalable BI platform for Teradata users.

Dozens of Teradata-specific features have been developed by MicroStrategy to ensure that customers derive maximum return from their Teradata investment. As a result, business users get the full range of reporting, analysis and information delivery features they desire, and IT professionals get the performance and maintainability they demand with a single integrated platform. MicroStrategy leverages the complete capabilities of Teradata.

Another major advantage of the MicroStrategy-Teradata relationship is annual technology reviews between the two companies. These meetings entail discussions on the state of current products, roadmaps for future releases of both products and methods for further integration between the two companies. MicroStrategy takes advantage of several key Teradata features and continues to utilize new functions as they are added into new Teradata releases.

MicroStrategy is one of a few BI vendors that has consistently participated in Teradata’s early adopters and Beta programs, this ensures the products work together, out of the box, before they are released. Because MicroStrategy performs early certifications of Teradata’s upcoming releases, by the time a new version of Teradata is shipped, it is already certified by MicroStrategy.

Beyond testing, MicroStrategy operates a specialized laboratory within its research and development group to optimize its performance on Teradata (a sample of these optimizations can be seen below).

Teradata Optimizations

	Support for different intermediate table types: derived tables, permanent tables, true temporary tables
	Intelligent table indexing: Takes advantage of partitioned primary indexes
	Insert/select optimizations to perform functions in bulk for Teradata intermediate tables
	Pre/post statements
	User-defined function support
	Primary index on intermediate tables for improved query performance
	Automated batch process to delay dropping of temporary tables
	Ability to collect statistics on intermediate tables as desired using Very Large Database (VLDB) settings
	Support for dozens of Teradata SQL functions including OLAP Assists

Recognized as the leader in Average Data Volume by The OLAP Survey 5, MicroStrategy applications achieve outstanding data scale because of their reliance on the processing power and data management capabilities of the underlying RDBMS.

MicroStrategy participated in the prioritization of Teradata’s OLAP Assist functions, and Teradata was able to accelerate the delivery of some of these functions. Additionally, MicroStrategy was the first BI vendor to take advantage of Teradata’s volatile tables, derived tables and native ranking, which increased performance by 20% to 45%. MicroStrategy runs every supported version of Teradata in its technology lab and certifies products using test data as well as customer data.

Both organizations are keenly focused on solving the difficult technical challenges of enterprise-class deployments. The joint customers of MicroStrategy and Teradata are likely to deploy BI to large numbers of users in an extranet/Web environment. Organizations consolidating and expanding their EDWs increasingly need to rely on the “industrial-class” technical strengths of such a solution.

"MicroStrategy as an engine has done a superb job in exploiting the underlying capabilities that the Teradata database engine, being able to use the advanced functions, the analytic functions, derived tables, the complex SQL that allows you to exploit the full power of the Teradata database engine, with the ease-of-use that MicroStrategy offers in its dimensional framework."
—Stephen Brobst, Chief Technology Officer, Teradata

The result of the two companies’ integrated efforts is a high-performing, highly scalable BI solution for customers. MicroStrategy offers an unsurpassed range of analytical functionality, which is further optimized when integrated with Teradata’s broad list of database features that improve data warehousing performance. Both Teradata and MicroStrategy engineering groups are constantly working together to define, refine and prioritize product features. The net benefit to the customer is an integrated BI and data warehouse solution that increases in value as MicroStrategy and Teradata continue to add features to their products.

To find our more about the MicroStrategy and Teradata, or to request materials, please e-mail alliances@microstrategy.com. T

© Teradata Magazine-June 2006

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