The News: Teradata hosted its 2023 Partner and Analyst Summit in San Diego, California. Of note was Teradata’s role as an innovative cloud-first platform, its commitment to its partner ecosystem, and how Teradata is navigating today’s hottest topics such as generative AI and ESG. See more about Teradata here.
Teradata Analyst Summit 2023: “Not Your Grandma’s Teradata”
Analyst Take: I recently attended the Teradata Analyst and Partner Summit and while the event was packed full of information, one quote in particular stuck out to me. In a presentation on the evolution and innovation of Teradata, someone quipped, “This is not your grandma’s Teradata.” Now personally, my grandma had enough trouble just figuring out email, so I’m not sure she ever would have figured out Teradata, but the point remains. Teradata has a rich history of data warehousing and yet they are evolving and reinventing themselves alongside the latest data trends.
Cloud First…
If I were asked for a single takeaway from the Teradata event, it would be this: Teradata is positioning themselves as a cloud-first data platform. Teradata has taken much of what has made it successful and re-architected it to be cloud native with VantageCloud. And in doing so, they have combined the experience and rich feature set gained over time with a modern architecture that is designed for today’s cloud requirements. With VantageCloud, Teradata believes it has positioned itself as the fastest way for organizations to ramp their workloads on to the cloud.
Teradata has also acknowledged that while cloud is a priority for many organizations, no one cloud will handle all data needs. The challenge is supporting a multi-cloud ecosystem, which Teradata answers with its QueryGrid functionality. QueryGrid allows Teradata to bring the query engine to the cloud of choice, rather than the difficult task of moving the data to the query engine. This capability greatly reduces the friction of managing data across a multi-cloud environment.
…But Not Cloud Only
While the headline may be “Teradata is cloud-first,” it was also well noted that they are certainly not “cloud only”. This comes with the acknowledgement that the public cloud is not the answer for all organizations or all workloads. So, while Teradata continues to push into the cloud, they are not leaving on-premises behind. It is well positioned to continue delivering on-premises solutions, and with QueryGrid it has the flexibility to expand on-premises deployments to hybrid-multi-cloud as needed.
Partner First
The Teradata summit was not only an analyst event, but a partner event as well. And just as the message around cloud was “cloud-first”, the message to partners was a commitment to being “partner-first”. While “your grandma’s Teradata” may have had a different approach, the message around the future of Teradata was clear: Teradata is a platform company, not a services company, and its mission cannot be achieved without its commitment to partners. This partner focus was made especially clear in regards to Teradata’s cloud strategy, as it was stated that 75% of cloud deals involved a partner.
Generative AI (x3)
The hot topic on everyone’s mind (whether they were at this particular event or not) was generative AI. In fact, the running joke from nearly all speakers at the event was that there was some type of Beetlejuice-esque obligation to mention generative AI at least three times during every presentation. So, I will go ahead and get that out of the way: Generative AI, Generative AI, Generative AI.
But jokes aside, the discussion was timely. Generative AI is the hottest topic around, and it is important to see that Teradata is staying on top of it. It was noted that the largest hurdle of AI applications is often managing and preparing the data. This is not entirely surprising, AI requires massive amounts of data and the cleaning, formatting, and preparation of this data is not a simple task.
While there are certainly challenges, the AI and analytics driven future looks promising for Teradata. Its long history as a large-scale data platform as well as its newly emerging cloud vision will be well suited for helping organizations overcome their AI data challenges.
ESG
Besides generative AI, ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) might have been the second biggest topic for companies over the last year. I have written extensively on ESG and sustainability over the last few months, and I don’t believe it is simply a trend that will disappear any time soon. Clearly, Teradata shares this belief as ESG was highlighted several times throughout the event.
Teradata shared implementations in which its technology was used by businesses to optimize sustainability challenges, such as a major airline leveraging Teradata analytics to achieve massive fuel savings. However, Teradata’s commitment to ESG goes beyond just sustainability. It was also proud to claim its ranking as one of the most ethical companies and stated that ethics was at the heart of everything it does. I do not share this to simply give Teradata a pat on the back for being ethical (although it is certainly something to be proud of), but because the conversation on ethics circled back to the previously-mentioned topic of AI.
Teradata stated that it has an ethical commitment to handle AI responsibly, stating “AI is not responsible, the people are responsible for AI.” While fear around the possible dangers of AI is growing daily, it is reassuring to see companies put ethics and their commitment to ESG at the heart of their AI strategies.
Competitive Landscape
The overarching theme from the summit was Teradata is evolving and innovating. But with that, comes an evaluation of where it now fits in the competitive landscape – specifically in the cloud. Although Teradata is emphatic about its cloud-first mission, its journey to the cloud has been slower than some of its competitors. Companies such as Snowflake and Databricks were born in the cloud and as a result are often thought of as the natural fit for a cloud hosted data platform. On the other hand, Teradata has a long legacy of supporting customers as an on-premises solution.
This presents a significant challenge for Teradata. While Teradata is on a mission to prove it is no longer your grandma’s Teradata, Snowflake and Databricks never had a “grandma version” to begin with – they are seen as young, new, and innovative. But the thing about grandmas (to further drag out this analogy), is that they often bring a whole lot of knowledge with them. And so does Teradata. While Teradata was not the first to the cloud, it took its time and leveraged its vast experience. As a result, Teradata has brought functionality along from its long history to the cloud that other providers are yet to develop. It has also taken its time and drawn from its on-premises roots to avoid some of the cost issues that have plagued other cloud platforms, including both migration costs and running costs as the environment scales. Teradata’s presence in both the cloud and on-premises also provides a distinct advantage in providing hybrid cloud possibilities.
The overall competitive landscape for Teradata is broad, and at times a bit fuzzy. It is competing with solutions labeled as databases, data warehouses, data marts, data lakes, and data lakehouses – and the distinctions between them are not always crystal clear. Competitors include Snowflake, Databricks, Cloudera, Oracle, and IBM. It is also in a unique position to compete with native data warehouse products from the same cloud providers it is partnering with such as Amazon Redshift, Azure Synapse, and Google BigQuery.
Final Thoughts
The 2023 Teradata Analyst and Partner Summit was a great opportunity to see Teradata in a new light. It is no longer “my grandma’s Teradata.” The company has a strong multi-hybrid-cloud vision, and a commitment to building a robust partner ecosystem to help it get there and compete amongst a broad set of competition. Additionally, they are well positioned to help business tackle the latest trends and challenges such as AI and ESG.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
Mitch comes to The Futurum Group through the acquisition of the Evaluator Group and is focused on the fast-paced and rapidly evolving areas of cloud computing and data storage. Mitch joined Evaluator Group in 2019 as a Research Associate covering numerous storage technologies and emerging IT trends.
With a passion for all things tech, Mitch brings deep technical knowledge and insight to The Futurum Group’s research by highlighting the latest in data center and information management solutions. Mitch’s coverage has spanned topics including primary and secondary storage, private and public clouds, networking fabrics, and more. With ever changing data technologies and rapidly emerging trends in today’s digital world, Mitch provides valuable insights into the IT landscape for enterprises, IT professionals, and technology enthusiasts alike.
