Teradata is the first to unveil a working prototype that demonstrates the innovative use of solid-state disk (SSD) drives in a data warehouse environment. An SSD drive provides superior performance because it doesn't have delays in the reading or writing of data, which is inherent in conventional electro-mechanical disks. The lack of moving parts almost completely eliminates the risk of mechanical failure. When fully developed for enterprise use, SSD drives will offer reliable and ultra-fast storage capability. It is anticipated that SSD drives will be available in 2011 for mainstream enterprise-class use. However, Teradata could be ready to deploy a data warehouse appliance configuration as early as 2009, depending on the market price and performance of SSD technology.

Teradata doesn't plan to abandon traditional hard drives. The newly announced Teradata Virtual Storage architecture will allow customers to leverage the price/performance of storage technology that best meets their business and budget needs. Customers will be able to choose an SSD-only appliance configuration or mix SSD drives with traditional hard drives in a single, integrated enterprise data warehouse. Teradata Virtual Storage will automatically move data based on usage patterns to match the performance characteristics of the storage. This approach is the most cost-effective way to balance performance and storage costs.

Standard Chartered First Bank Korea (SCFB) has selected Teradata Relationship Manager, a comprehensive analytics and marketing automation software portfolio, for customer relationship management (CRM) as an upgrade to its existing Teradata CRM software. This software package is designed to help marketers fully leverage the power, speed and real-time capabilities of the Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse, which is the foundation for the bank's business intelligence (BI) management system.

Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) and GE Rail Services (GERS) have earned best-practices awards for 2008 from The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI). The annual awards recognize companies with innovative business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing projects.

ARC won for data governance through its efforts to improve data content and data handling, resulting in increased employee productivity, improved time to market for data products and services, and additional revenues. ARC's BI and data warehousing implementation has been in place since 2002.

GERS won for enterprise BI. Its latest comprehensive information delivery Enterprise BI Portal meets a wide array of user needs, from self-service and ad hoc analysis to standardized metrics reports organized by business function to dashboards and many sophisticated strategic and operational analytics applications.

Five Teradata customers now have data warehousing environments exceeding 1 petabyte, processing tens and hundreds of terabytes per day. The first honorees to reach "Petabyte Power Players" status are an online auction company with 5.0 petabytes of data, a retailer with 2.5 petabytes, two large financial service institutions with 1.5 and 1.4 petabytes, respectively, and a manufacturer with a 1-petabyte data warehouse. Also, 35 Teradata customers have more than 100TB in their Teradata systems, and that number is increasing.

InformationWeek rated Teradata IT services 22nd in its annual ranking of the 500 most innovative users of business technology in the nation. The InformationWeek 500 are companies with at least $500 million in annual revenue that power their businesses by leveraging IT in innovative ways. Teradata received its rating for its implementation of new technologies and innovative IT approaches to support customers and improve productivity. T

Teradata Magazine-December 2008