Teradata Apparently Getting Under Oracle’s Thick Skin

Ever heard of Oracle getting aggressive against competitors by publishing surprising claims in major international newspaper ads? Nah, can’t be possible. (Right.)

Well, it’s true. Oracle is getting noisy in the data warehousing space. The case in point is an ad in the Wall Street Journal that claims its Exadata server performed so well that it helped the company win a big contract over one of Teradata‘s largest Asian customers because it worked at higher speeds and consumed less space and energy.

The ad includes the line “Save the Planet, Dump your Teradata.”

Teradata is a good-sized company, but Oracle is the second-largest software company in the world, in terms of revenue. Thus, Teradata must be doing something interesting.

This was no small ad campaign. It ran in all U.S., Europe and Asia editions of the paper, according to the Journal.

Teradata’s side of the story is that the ad refers a deal that took place in 2009, and that it did not get a chance to compete for the business, which replaced an older system.

“Despite its age, it is an old story that Oracle keeps retelling,” Randy Lea, vice president of Teradata Products and Services Marketing, told the Dayton Business Journal. “In the three years since the Exadata product was launched, 15 times as many customers have ditched Oracle for Teradata. Teradata remains confident that our database systems will continue to outperform Oracle’s for years to come.”

So there you go.