Viewpoints
Why Teradata
Perfect Fit
How to choose a data warehouse solution that suits your organization’s analytics requirements.
by Chris Twogood
Every company has analytics needs, but those needs can vary broadly from organization to organization. When choosing a data analytics platform, look for a solution, purpose-built to your company’s specific requirements, that offers the maximum return on investment (ROI) at the minimum time to value. And whatever solution you choose, make sure it can easily grow and adapt to your company’s changing business requirements.
Business information solutions are available to match virtually every level of need. The spectrum, from simplest to most sophisticated, looks like this:
- A data warehouse/data mart offers enterprise-standard functions for companies wanting to analyze and report on data from one or two subject applications. For instance, small retailers can do sales and inventory analysis to determine pricing. This level of solution is ideal for small or mid-sized companies or departmental solutions within larger organizations.
- An integrated data warehouse is typically used to drive strategic analysis in an organization. It provides integrated data analytics capabilities for multiple applications to answer a broader set of business questions. At this solution level, companies likely have a higher number of users, so they need an agile solution that ensures consistent levels of performance. With an integrated data warehouse, a logistics company, for example, can get better visibility of its transportation assets, which will help reduce maintenance costs, increase efficiency and ease waybill management.
- An active data warehouse is for organizations that require real-time loads and sub-second data query response times for mission-critical processes—best illustrated by a financial services firm. With this type of warehouse, the firm can perform accurate, real-time product offers at the customer’s preferred channel, such as an ATM or call center. At this level, organizations require the combination of operational and strategic elements on one platform without worrying about downtime while ensuring that the solution is meeting all of the diverse service level agreement (SLA) requirements.
Data Platform Criteria
Click here for a PDF detailing 16 data platform criteria that form the basis for the entire spectrum of data warehouse solutions. Defining your company’s needs around each of the criteria will help you better evaluate prospective vendors and their products. It will also assist you in choosing the solution that’s right for your organization now and can grow and adapt to your company’s ever-changing business needs in the future.
Why Teradata for a Solution to Fit Your Organization?
The Teradata family of purpose-built platforms offers solutions for companies at every point in the evolution of the data warehouse and business analytics solutions. Each one can be easily integrated with or ported to other family members as a com-pany’s needs grow.
Data Mart Appliance
Best suited as a data mart, an entry-level data warehouse or as a single-department analytics solution for companies with the following solution requirements:
- Lower scalability
- Basic data warehouse
Data Warehouse Appliance
Optimized for analytical tasks and provides strategic intelligence capabilities for organizations that have these criteria:
- Fast analytical performance
- Integrated data warehouse
Extreme Data Appliance
Offered at Teradata’s lowest price per terabyte, this solution enables strategic intelligence on large data volumes. It is best for organizations that need a system that has:
- Analytical archive and deep-dive analytics capabilities
- Highest volume for data storage
- Lower levels of query concurrency
Extreme Performance Appliance
Provides operational intelligence, ideal for companies that have:
- Extremely fast, hyper-analytic information-processing needs
- High levels of query concurrency
- Very precise service level agreement (SLA) requirements
Active Enterprise Data Warehouse
Designed to offer strategic and operational intelligence for companies with:
- Optimized active workloads
- High data volume capacity
- Highest levels of query concurrency
- Very precise SLArequirements
- Mission-critical system availability
- Flexible configurations
Chris Twogood is the product marketing manager for the Teradata platforms.