Teradata’s New DW Appliance Begets Wrath from Netezza

Data warehousing — remember when that was a hot buzzphrase about seven years ago? — remains a growing sector of IT data storage, and the generally acknowledged market leader continues to be Teradata.

For those of you who might not be clear on the definition: A data warehouse is a repository of an organization’s electronically stored data designed to facilitate reporting and analysis. An efficient data warehouse is able to retrieve and analyze data, to extract, transform and load data, and to manage dictionary data — so that it can be used for business intelligence.

Traditionally, data warehouses are big, hulking systems used for large enterprises. Not so anymore. Like the newer SAN and NAS storage systems, they are being slimmed down for smaller businesses and becoming easier to use. Prices are coming down, too, for these more compact systems.

Newswise, the Miamisburg, Ohio-based corporation yesterday introduced a scalable new entry-level data warehouse in appliance form, one that can grow into an enterprise-level setup, using the Teradata 12.0 database engine.

The new platform group includes: Teradata 550 SMP (symmetric multiprocessing), with a price of $67,000 per terabyte, a departmental data warehouse; Teradata 2500, priced at $125,000 per terabyte, an entry-level data warehouse for companies that are just starting out or for those with other analytical platform requirements in their enterprises; and Teradata 5550, an active data warehouse-class platform, starts at $200,000 per TB, depending on the performance and availability needs of the customer. You can find out more details here.

This must be a significant new entry into the DW playing field, because a Teradata competitor — Netezza — was eager to speak out about the development.

“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,” Netezza President and COO Jim Baum told The Station via email.

“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.”

Let the DW debate begin. What’s your take on this: Is a data warehousing appliance something you might be interested in acquiring?