SAS and Teradata join forces

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SAS and Teradata will team up and integrate their data analytic products, the companies announced at the Teradata Partners conference in Las Vegas.

SAS will bring its business intelligence (BI) and analytics software to the table, which Teradata will embed within its database engine, allowing the software to run inside the Teradata environment. The companies will also tie up their sales, marketing and services.

"It enables companies to leverage our core strengths," said SAS chief executive Dr Jim Goodnight.

The firms said that the integration means their shared customers will no longer need to extract data from the Teradata platform before analysing it with SAS software, saving time.

"As a result of integrating SAS and Teradata technologies, we have reduced overall processing time to run our forecasting model from 36 hours to one hour and 15 minutes," said Thomas Tileston, vice president of business decision support for Warner Home Video, in a statement.

The partnering was spurred by demand from their shared customers, Teradata executive vice president of global field operations Bob Fair said. "It's all about market demand," he said, adding that a major driver behind the partnership was customers asking the firms to get together.

The companies never considered a stronger tieup, such as a merger or acquisition, because it simply wasn't necessary, said Jim Davis, senior vice president and chief marketing office for SAS. "We were able to accomplish what we needed in the marketplace without taking that route," said Davis.

The partnership will focus first on retail and financial sectors - "sweet spots" for both companies, Davis and Fair said - but will cover all verticals.

Despite the marriage, the two firms will still compete in the customer relationship management (CRM) space. "From that particular solution perspective, we'll choose to compete," said Fair.

Teradata also announced the releases of Teradata 12 - the latest version of their database - as well as Relationship Manager Version 6 and new Enterprise Data Management Services.

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