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Far-flung Teradata at home here
The offshoot of NCR took advantage of the talent base that already was in the Dayton area.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
MIAMI TWP., Montgomery County — The reasons for separating a data warehousing company from a corporate parent more focused on banking machines and point-of-sale systems were never murky.
But where do you anchor a $1.3 billion data empire with 90 properties covering 2 million square feet from El Segundo, Calif. through Atlanta to Europe, Africa and Asia?
In the Dayton area of course.
At least, that was clear to Mike Koehler, president and chief executive of Teradata Corp., and the team that helped separate that company from NCR Corp. in October 2007.
"Mike actually decided that this was the place for us to be," said Bruce Langos, Teradata chief operations officer.
Today, Teradata is found in a 40,000-square-foot building northeast of Ohio 741 and Miami Village Drive, in the shadow of that other local information powerhouse, LexisNexis.
Doing business globally from the Dayton area? For Teradata, it makes sense.
After working under the NCR umbrella since the late 1980s, plenty of talent was already local, Langos said. Area employees — many of them working from their homes — were a key part of making the separation from NCR. Many lived in the Mason and Northern Cincinnati areas, so a location south of Dayton made sense.
"There really wasn't a reason to move on anywhere," Langos said.
Teradata's Dayton-area base never bothered Jeff Embersits, managing partner of Belmont, Calif.-based Shareholder Value Management, who has had his eye on Teradata for nearly 15 years. Embersits said what is perhaps more crucial is where Teradata puts sales offices and research and development functions.
"It doesn't faze me," Embersits said of the Dayton-area headquarters.
Asked about Koehler's presence in Atlanta, where the Teradata CEO is based, Embersits added: "That's why they have corporate jets."
Last year, Langos found himself in a crucial transition role for Teradata after 32 years with NCR. Langos was a senior vice president of global operations reporting directly to Bill Nuti, NCR CEO.
His family had a long history with NCR, but Langos saw an opportunity to do something new with Teradata — a company that has the feel of a well-funded start-up. (The company had $339 million in cash as of March 31.) Getting in on the ground floor of an IPO — an initial public stock offering that launches a publicly traded company — also beckoned.
"It was a unique opportunity for all of us," Langos recalled. "It was an entity that was within NCR that was really operating independently to some extent, even though we were kind of sharing real estate and infrastructure. But for the most part, Teradata was well on its way to its growth."
The company offers data warehousing and business analysis to more than 850 customers. Scan the Fortune 500 list, and many of Teradata's (and NCR's) customers are right there.
Teradata Corp.
Focus: Data warehousing, analysis.
Headquarters: 2835 Miami Village Drive, Miami Twp.
Employees: About 350 employees are at the Miami Twp. building, about 50-60 are still at the NCR headquarters (1700 S. Patterson Blvd., Dayton)
Other local sites: Bruce Langos acknowledges that the headquarters leaves little room to spare. He said company leaders haven't decided about how to address that, but he also said: "There is a lot of available space nearby" for employees.
Functions in Teradata headquarters
Legal, financial planning, order management, marketing, part of customer services group, human resources
Source: Bruce Langos, Teradata COO
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.
