So let’s dissect the press release in our custom style, it can be found here:
SAN DIEGO – October 7, 2015 – Teradata Corp. (NYSE: TDC), the big data analytics and marketing applications company, announced today it is making its Teradata Database, the market’s leading data warehousing and analytic solution, available for cloud deployment on AWS to support production workloads. The initial version of Teradata Database on AWS will be offered on a variety of individual multi-terabyte virtual servers--known as Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) instances--in supported AWS regions via a listing in the AWS Marketplace. […]MyPOV – So that sums it up well: The prove veteran Teradata Database will be running on Amazon AWS EC2 instances, with support for production workloads. For the longest time customers had to buy hardware to run the Teradata Datawarehouse from Teradata – but these times are over now. Definitively a good move and another proofpoint of a new approach a Teradata (we noticed already at the analyst summit – see here), Teradata is not afraid to challenge revenue streams and traditions.
[…] AWS is the leading cloud service provider and has a global footprint with more than one million active customers in 190 countries. With Teradata Database on AWS, supported use cases include test and development, quality assurance, data marts, disaster recovery, and production analytics. The primary benefits to customers include:MyPOV – Teradata is reaping all the benefits from running on AWS, supporting all possible deployments and use cases. Now Teradata is available for anyone with access to the web (and a credit card, we need to see what Teradata will charge for using its software).
• Wider accessibility to the market’s leading data warehouse and analytic solution
• Closer proximity of the database to data sources and partner software in the cloud
• Easier scalability with self-service provisioning and hourly pay-as-you-go convenience
“This is a significant announcement for Teradata because it illustrates a fundamentally new deployment option for what has long been the industry’s most respected engine for production analytics,” said Chris Twogood, Vice President of Product and Services Marketing at Teradata. “In terms of convenience, security, performance, and market adoption, cloud computing has proven its value. By incorporating AWS as the first public cloud offering for deploying a production Teradata Database, we will make it easier for companies of all sizes to become data-driven with best-in-class data warehousing and analytics.”MyPOV – Good quote from Twogood – note the emphasis on ‘first’ – so there may be more and different cloud providers coming down the road.
Twogood said that a growing number of existing and prospective customers want a hybrid mixture of deployment options – with some resources maintained physically on-premises and other services delivered virtually via the cloud. Representing Teradata’s initial version of Teradata Database for public cloud deployment, Teradata Database on AWS will expand the range of choices for companies to extract the greatest analytical insights for their organizations:MyPOV – This adds a third deployment option of Teradata. And typically public cloud based deployments (we still need to learn on pricing, reading along in the press release) – are cheaper for customers than on premise / private cloud deployments, due to less hardware utilization on premises. We will also have to see if Teradata will support bursting to the cloud, e.g. when on premises capacity is maxed out. This is tricky given the nature of data centric applications like Teradata's, but it can be achieved.
• On-premises integrated data warehouse: Teradata Platforms and Appliances
• Purpose-built managed environment: Teradata Cloud
• Self-service public cloud: Teradata Database on AWS
• Hybrid approach using a combination of the above
Additionally, Teradata Production and Advisory Services, delivered by a deep bench of industry and analytic experts within Teradata Professional Services, are available to assist new and existing customers with provisioning, integration, management, and fine tuning of Teradata Database across all deployment options.MyPOV – Good to see Teradata is not missing the opportunity to sell services. Customer will initially need help to deploy these new capabilities. Over the longer run they should be automated though software though, as software scales better than humans.
More information about Teradata Database on AWS is available from company representatives exhibiting at the AWS re:Invent annual user conference from October 6-9 in Las Vegas and at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2015 event from October 4-8 in Orlando. Additional insight will also be shared during the upcoming Teradata 2015 PARTNERS Conference and Expo, the premier global data analytics conference taking place October 18-22 in Anaheim. Attendees are encouraged to visit Teradata’s Analytics in the Cloud station in the Expo Hall and participate in the cloud-focused PARTNERS breakout session titled, “The Rise of the Purpose-Built Analytics Cloud” on Tuesday, October 20 from 9:00 to 10:15 am.MyPOV – Well good ;bang for buck’ hitting an own and two other major events. Currently attending AWS reinvent, the event has grown to 15k+ attendees, so lots of attention on new announcements.
AvailabilityMyPOV – Good to see a near availability date, even more important to see that ‘pay as you use; principles will be followed. Key also to see that a AWS only deployment is supported, so the AWS deployment is a first class citizen next to the Teradata on premises and Teradata cloud deployment options. But we miss hearing what it will cost for customers to use Teradata on AWS.
The initial version of Teradata Database on AWS will be available in Q1 2016 for global deployment. It will be offered on a variety of individual multi-terabyte Amazon EC2 instance types via a listing in the AWS Marketplace. EC2 is a web-based service that allows business subscribers to run application programs in the Amazon computing environment and pay only for capacity that is actually used. Customers will have the ability to deploy standalone on AWS or can complement both on-premises and Teradata Cloud environments.
Overall MyPOV
A good move by Teradata, that is not stopping at challenging the pastest, its engineered system business, optimized to run the Teradata Database. It’s a copy of the Microsoft post Ballmer strategy – analogous to an ‘Office everywhere’ there seems to be a ‘Teradata everywhere’ strategy in place. Customers should understand the full cost of running Teradata Warehouse on AWS, including license / usage payments to Teradata.On the concern side we see uncertainty on pricing. Cost for moving to cloud is key planning and decision criteria for enterprise. We are certain that Teradata will not make this move without making AWS based Teradata Database reasonably attractive enough. But it would also not be good business acumen to make these too cheap, unless we may see a departure by Teradata from building its engineered systems in the future. That would be a serious blow to the overall engineered (or converged) system approach, but maybe data warehouses can be run cheaper on Linux based ‘plain vanilla’ systems. We will see.
Overall a good move to Teradata, that really only begs the question, what took so long to get there.
More on Teradata
- News Analysis - Teradata Launches First Enterprise Support for Presto read here
- Progress Report - Teradata is alive and kicking and shows some good 'paranoid' practices read here
- Check out my colleague Doug Henschen's view on Presto and the recent analyst event - read here
- Progress Report - Teradata is alive and kicking and shows some good 'paranoid' practices - read here
