Teradata announces new trio of servers

Data warehouse supplier Teradata has announced three new servers to answer the need for business intelligence appliances and higher performance in its enterprise data warehouse products.

Teradata ships business intelligence systems that encourage a single enterprise-wide data warehouse implemented with a massively parallel processing (MPP) scheme by clustering its servers on its proprietary circuit- and packet-switch BYNET interconnect.

A data warehouse is a massive store, typically of customer purchase records, which can be analysed by business intelligence software to reveal connections between purchased items and other factors to enable retailers and mobile phone companies, for example, to gain more money from their customers.

Competitors such as Netezza have prospered by offering more affordable and stand-alone appliance like systems, known as data marts.

Teradata is offering two appliance-class servers and a new high-end machine.

The new 550 SMP system uses a dual-core processor and is positioned as a departmental or stand-alone appliance. It costs €55,000 (£44,130) per terabyte and, while its database and scripts can be moved to Teradata's mainstream enterprise data warehouse, the server itself cannot be linked to BYNET.

The 2500 is the same basic building block but packaged so that it can link in to BYNET and thus become part of the MPP resource. Teradata position it as an entry-level machine with a price of €100,000/TB. It can scale up to 146TB.

The 5550 is in a different class. Teradata's new high-end BYNET-capable system, it uses quad-core processors and is up to twice as fast as the previous range-topping dual-core 5500. Pricing starts at €170,000/TB.

All three new servers run the firm's recently-announced 12.0 database software.

Richard Winter, president of data warehousing research consultancy WinterCorp, said: "Teradata has rewritten the rules in the industry," by offering appliance-level systems able to deal with the full range of database and query complexity.

Darryl MacDonald, Teradata's chief marketing officer, said: "With this family, customers can now apply the power of Teradata to address all of their analytical needs, at all levels of complexity and size."

But Jim Baum, Netezza's chief operating officer, was dismissive. "Teradata has finally recognized the impact of data warehouse appliances, entering this market segment eight years after Netezza invented it and at the back of the line of a handful of other vendors," he said.

He added: "From our position as the market leader, Netezza views this as validation of the current data warehouse appliance market success, and more importantly, a concession that the present and the future of the data warehouse market lies in the expanding role of appliances."

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