Datawarehousing specialist Teradata used its annual user
conference in Florence earlier this month to announce a host of
software releases and reveal plans to move its platforms on to a
64-bit architecture.
The company, part of retail systems giant NCR, said it would move
its hardware platforms on to a 64-bit Intel Itanium II-based
architecture, running both HP-UX and Windows (2000 and .net),
during 2004.
Teradata's datawarehouse has traditionally been run on NCR's
Unix-based platform, and some analysts have criticised the company
for not providing enough support for alternative
environments.
Mark Hurd, NCR's chief executive, rebutted these claims. "About 35%
of our datawarehouse sales are now on Windows 2000 platforms,
compared with 10% two years ago," he said. "We could go on to Linux
if we wanted - there is nothing technical stopping us - but it is
not a priority for us at the moment."
To complement its move to 64-bit computing, Teradata will release
version 5.0 of its customer relationship management application in
August, promising faster lead management and increased
personalisation across all channels. The software, which will run
on both Unix- and NT4-based platforms, has been enhanced for better
identification of industry-specific business opportunities, the
company said.
Teradata will also release version 6.0 of its Financial Services
Logical Data Model software later this year. It is designed to to
maximise the value of a datawarehouse by structuring and organising
customer and business data.