Users welcomed plans announced today for SAP's Netweaver
datawarehouse to run on the Teradata database.
Delegates at Teradata's annual user conference in Istanbul,
where the deal was announced, regarded it as a significant shift in
the market.
Joe Zakutney, vice-president of global applications at The
Hershey Company, said the deal was significant for companies like
Hershey which are intense users of Teradata and SAP.
"The promise of tighter integration and closer collaboration is
significant," he said. "Most companies realise that centralised
datawarehousing is the best approach for business intelligence and
analytics, and SAP software running on Teradata is exactly the kind
of combination we foresee as a technology advantage in the years
ahead."
Swisscom also welcomed the deal.
"The promise of this new agreement is well understood by
companies that rely on solutions from both SAP and Teradata and is
a natural step forward to help us get the most from our
investment," said Daniel Neuhaus, head of datawarehouse and
business intelligence at the Swiss telecommunications firm.
Another delegate said, "This is going to be very significant
because the volume of data is rising so fast and there are few
companies which can handle the growth rate."
According to Forrester Research, Teradata leads IBM and Oracle
in high-performance database systems, especially in analysing data
to service business intelligence. Teradata supports databases
ranging from 6Tbytes up to 130 petabytes. New customers last year
included French retailer Carrefour and Bouyges Telecommunications.
They joined Wal-Mart, HSBC and ICA, among others.
Announcing the deal, Herman Wimmer, Teradata's CEO for the
Europe, Middle East and Africa division, said a customer analysis
had shown an 80% overlap between it and SAP.
Stephan Rossius, senior vice-president of SAP's global ecosystem
and partner group, said it made sense for the two leaders in their
respective sectors to cooperate. "It is very hard to bypass the
leader in the market, so it is critical we work together," he
said.
Terdata said the "co-innovation" partnership would deliver an
integrated, scalable solution that lowers total cost of ownership
and consolidates data on one database platform.
Commenting on the deal, Henry Morris, senior vice-president for
worldwide software and services research at IDC, said many CIOs
were seeking to consolidate their IT investments to improve
efficiency.
"The integration of Netweaver and Teradata with BusinessObjects
business intelligence tools supports such a strategy. This is a
significant development that will be welcomed, especially by the
many large companies who are joint SAP-Teradata customers."