When you’re handling 800,000 pieces of mail per day while serving more than 200 countries and 2,000 cities, you need tools that allow you to quickly respond to customers and organize your transportation and logistics network. That’s why China Post Express Mail Service (EMS) Bureau chose Teradata’s active data warehouse as the foundation for its new track-and-trace system.

The active data warehouse will integrate data and business information from EMS’s branches as well as its transportation and logistics networks to provide near real-time and more detailed delivery information to customers. In addition, it will allow workers access to accurate and on-time information to handle internal inquiries faster. The new system will help make EMS a globally competitive courier, strengthen its brand image and promote business development and organization.

Gartner’s recently published “Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management System Servers, 2006” positioned the NCR server in the leaders’ quadrant. Vendors who are positioned in the leaders’ quadrant are performing well today, have a clear vision of market direction and are actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market.

The report evaluated database management system servers for data warehousing based on the ability to execute and their completeness of vision. View the report.

Teradata has released Teradata Warehouse 8.2, a suite of software, hardware and consulting services. The solution offers faster performance and simplified system management to deliver active enterprise intelligence. Its key components include the flagship Teradata Database V2R6.2, Teradata Tools and Utilities 8.2 and the NCR 5450 Server.

Teradata has taken a second avenue to further improve its warehouse by releasing the new NCR 6843 (NS7.0) Enterprise Storage Array. The array features 73GB, 15K RPM disk drives used with previous generations of storage products. A single NCR 6843 cabinet can support as many as 144 disk drives in a single array. Provided by LSI Logic Corporation, the technology for the new product is integrated for use in Teradata systems. The NCR 6843 replaces the NCR 6842 and is compatible with MP-RAS UNIX (32-bit), Novell SUSE LINUX (64-bit) and Windows Server 2003 (32-bit).

Norwich Union deployed a Teradata active data warehouse to support the upcoming launch of its “Pay As You Drive” insurance service into the United Kingdom market.

Norwich has been testing “Pay As You Drive” insurance since 2004, when a pilot of 5,000 motorists was launched. Norwich’s new data warehouse will allow the company to take data from more than 10 million trips recorded during this pilot and translate it into savings for customers.

The service helps motorists control the cost of insurance by making informed choices about when, where and how often they use their car. Customers will receive monthly bills based on car usage, including time of day, type of road, and mileage—a first in motor insurance. Bills will look similar to mobile phone bills, with the premiums for each trip calculated and totalled. With the full launch, Norwich Union expects data collection rates will increase more than fifteen-fold in the first year.

With a goal of creating a single view of its business to employ marketing campaigns, cross-selling, risk management and transaction management, Banco Paris selected Teradata for its enterprise data warehouse (EDW).

The Chilean financial institution, founded in 2004, provides a variety of consumer products, including loans, credit cards, mortgages, checking and savings accounts and certificates of deposit (CDs). Because of these growing services and increasing customer acquisitions, Banco Paris is consolidating and leveraging its customer, business and operational data through a Teradata Warehouse.

Two Teradata customers—Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) and the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Financial Group—received the 2006 World Class Solution Awards from DM Review Magazine for being “elite innovators.”

RBC Financial Group earned its award in the enterprise data warehousing category. ARC won its award in the business intelligence (BI) category for the mission-critical initiatives the company successfully deployed. The two were chosen from more than 70 entries worldwide and showcase best practices in the BI and data warehousing.

Teradata has begun shipping enhanced versions of the Teradata Database running on the 64-bit version of the SUSE LINUX Enterprise from Novell. With the addition of LINUX to the list of operating systems, Teradata provides customers with yet another choice to enable seamless integration of the Teradata Warehouse into any IT architecture.

Teradata selected Novell and its SUSE LINUX Enterprise platform because it provides a full range of industry-leading LINUX services. Novell provides a scaleable and efficient solution for enterprise customers who are considering the move to an open-source operating system (OS).

Teradata recently announced a major upgrade to its Data Warehouse Maturity Assessment consulting service for executives seeking to maximize the value of data warehousing investments. Under this improved service, consultants perform a rigorous analysis of a company’s data warehouse environment in 33 key dimensions such as workload demands, enterprise integration and employee communication and training. Some of the enhanced capabilities include appraising:

	Business continuity to determine a company’s system availability regardless of situation and to discover its continuity plans’ weakest links. This ensures information is readily available and consistently delivered while continually protecting the quality and integrity of the data.
	Evolving business demands and the data warehouse’s capability to get results even as the competitive landscape and needs of the business change.
	Business governance, which establishes a formalized process to weigh the value of each project and highlight reusable assets that can be shared across projects.

Teradata consulting teams have provided business plans to overcome three commonly identified barriers: the inability to transform valuable data into usable business intelligence (BI); immature governance standards and practices, which impede the ability to build and sustain a cost-effective, integrated, cross-functional analytical environment; and the costly proliferation of data marts and other external data repositories that prevent easy user access and contribute to data quality and integrity issues.

SUPERVALU, the third largest retail grocer in the United States, has expanded its Teradata data warehouse with an 18-node upgrade on the new NCR 5450 Server. The upgrade enhances its existing enterprise data warehouse (EDW) and will allow SUPERVALU to further utilize Teradata’s analytic software. The grocer updates its data warehouse throughout the day to better support its operations and consolidates data into its EDW so business users can quickly respond to market changes.

Another retail powerhouse, Sears Holdings Corporation, has implemented a new Teradata data warehouse. The company has also employed Teradata Professional Services and Customer Services. The combination will allow end users at Sears Holdings to make critical business decisions that will benefit the entire enterprise, says Jeff Roesch, IT vice president for Sears Report and Planning Systems.

Nationwide Insurance has named Teradata the recipient of the Technology Innovation in Technology Managers Forum’s 2006 Best Practice Awards program. Teradata was chosen from a field of “exceptional entries,” says Nationwide, by a panel of judges who are all IT managers with high standards for these Best Practices awards. Judges picked Teradata for its embodiment of the Best Practices philosophy: a project emblematic of a company’s standard of excellence, an industry model of which can be quantified, adapted and repeated.

Responding to emerging trends in the global marketplace, Teradata has opened its new Global Consulting Center in Dalian, China. The center’s multilingual staff specializes in data warehousing and business intelligence (BI) software and offers capabilities in end-to-end enterprise data warehouse (EDW) implementation. The team, an extension of Teradata Professional Services, provides support to Teradata customers throughout North Asia, including Japan.

Teradata Magazine-December 2006