Our use case is for data warehousing and BI reporting. We are customers of Teradata.
Expensive and lacking scalability but functions speedily
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The solution is speedy and doesn't require much of a DBA team, it's kind of baked right into the product.
What needs improvement?
Any value this product provides is offset by the high cost and lack of scalability. We're moving to Snowflake because of the scalability and cost differentials. There are better, more flexible, robust, and economical options out there.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution on and off for 20 years.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable, it's a best-of-breed product, but the architecture is old school.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is fine.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was fine but whenever we needed to increase the size and capacity, it would literally take a room full of people, a very coordinated effort and it was a huge project, in contrast to a product like Snowflake, where you literally just change the warehouse size and it auto-scales. So those types of things really hindered Teradata prem.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The cost depends on the size and it can be quite expensive. If you have 1,000 users, the cost can be anywhere from half a million to a million dollars a year.
What other advice do I have?
It's hard to compare their on-prem solution to current cloud environments. From an on-prem perspective, it's expensive but fantastic.The problem is that nobody's playing in that space anymore. People are using the cloud, and the cloud has better options.
Because it's on-prem, I rate this solution four out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Principal at Insight Data Consulting
Excellent native features, highly stable, and impressive automation
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features of Teradata are that it is a massively parallel platform and I can receive a lot of data and get the queries out correctly, especially if it's been appropriately designed. The native features make it very suitable for multiple large data tasks in a structured data environment. Additionally, the automation is very good."
- "I've been using the same UI for 20 years in Teradata. It could use some updating. Adding more stability around Teradata Studio would be outstanding. Teradata Studio is a Java-based version of their tool. It's much better now, but it still has some room for improvement."
What is our primary use case?
Teradata is used for many use cases, such as clickstream, website support, and manufacturing control.
How has it helped my organization?
Teradata has helped our organization accelerate substantially the decision-making that happens.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of Teradata are that it is a massively parallel platform and I can receive a lot of data and get the queries out correctly, especially if it's been appropriately designed. The native features make it very suitable for multiple large data tasks in a structured data environment. Additionally, the automation is very good.
What needs improvement?
I've been using the same UI for 20 years in Teradata. It could use some updating. Adding more stability around Teradata Studio would be outstanding. Teradata Studio is a Java-based version of their tool. It's much better now, but it still has some room for improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Teradata for approximately 20 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of Teradata is outstanding.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Teradata is highly scalable, it is excellent.
We have approximately hundreds of users using this solution.
How are customer service and support?
I have not used support recently, but I have previously.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used SQL Server.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of Teradata is complex. The business layers on top of Teradata add to the complexity. The way the business uses Teradata adds to the complexity that the software itself doesn't necessarily have.
You can do an upgrade for Teradata in a couple of days. Deploying it is not difficult at all, nor is it time-consuming.
I rate the ease of setup for Teradata a one out of five.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price of Teradata is expensive. However, what they deliver they are outstanding. If you're looking for an inexpensive solution to run a database, this isn't your tool. It's the Ferrari of databases for data warehousing.
There are add-ons that you can purchase, such as special features. Teradata likes to sell an industry logical data model that's customized for just about every industry they have clients in. That is an extremely expensive add-on, but it does give you a step up in getting your logical modeling created. They've also done some work towards being able to go from logical to physical in an automated fashion with that ILM.
What other advice do I have?
Teradata is being used on-premise, but we're moving to the cloud and I don't know that we'll retain Teradata further. We might be switching to the Google platform and their native databases.
Make sure that your data volumes are large enough for it and that you follow their standards. The modeling for Teradata is slightly different than anything else out there. Match your primary indexes if you can. These PI-to-PI joins are incredibly fast, even with massive amounts of data. I've worked on Teradata installations in the petabyte range.
I rate Teradata a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Teradata
October 2024
Learn what your peers think about Teradata. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
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Data Architect, Section Head at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Good data warehousing, scalable, and offers good functionality
Pros and Cons
- "The functionality of the solution is excellent."
- "I'm not sure about the unstructured data management capabilities. It could be improved."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for data warehousing.
What is most valuable?
The loading time of the solution is quite good.
What really impressed me is their approach to design the data warehouse. It's very different from other solutions. They have their own methodologies for doing things, and they can come up with a very solid and good design that can stand the test of time.
The functionality of the solution is excellent.
The solution can scale.
It's quite a stable product.
On the product side, I don't think anyone can actually beat them with data warehousing.
What needs improvement?
I'm not sure about the unstructured data management capabilities. It could be improved.
They should, I think, try to do more of this open-source initiative to encourage more people to use it. Otherwise, it's my opinion that they might lose our business in the long run.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for about three years at this point.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
As one of the top companies in the world, the solution is very stable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's quite good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Product-wise the scalability and usability, is all excellent. They are the top players in this with their new database. The cloud helps make it so scalable. We're catching up and starting to scale, however, we aren't there yet.
How was the initial setup?
I don't recall if the solution had a complex or straightforward setup. I wasn't part of the process.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I'm not sure if we would want to keep paying for the solution. They should make some of the software a community edition or something like that to encourage more people to use it.
What other advice do I have?
This is a very good solution.
After looking at the recent price drops, they need to offer very good discounts for people that bought it. The value proposition is actually quite good compared to many years ago. For most of the enterprises out there, they're focusing mainly on structure data. This solution ticks that box.
As long as they can control the price incrementally in the future, I think they're a very good strong platform.
I'd rate this product in terms of its functionality, stability, and scalability, as almost perfect. It's a nine out of ten. I don't think there's anything to complain about. It's only the price that's a sticking point for us.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Technical Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Faster and more resilient with zero downtime in the twenty years we've used it
Pros and Cons
- "It is very stable. It's 100% uptime. Speed and resilience are one of the greatest features of this product. In almost twenty years we've never had downtime, except for outages for patches and upgrades. We've never had a system failure in twenty years."
- "They should add more connectors to different platforms."
What is our primary use case?
We currently use the on-prem model of this solution. Our primary use case of this solution is as an enterprise tech warehouse for business intelligence across different domains.
How has it helped my organization?
We've been using Teradata for close to twenty years and this version is a lot faster and more improved than the previous version that we used. It gives us more. It gives us the ability to be more resilient. It has fallback on default. We always have a copy of the copied data. There's more resilience and from a banking perspective, that is a good thing.
What is most valuable?
Having continual fallback is good for security. We use the standard TTU utilities. That's what we use with all the different versions. It's faster and more resilient.
What needs improvement?
They should add more connectors to different platforms.
It could use a more powerful CPU and a faster IO.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for the last twenty years. We upgraded to the version we are currently using in December.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable. It's 100% uptime. Speed and resilience are one of the greatest features of this product. In almost twenty years we've never had downtime, except for outages for patches and upgrades. We've never had a system failure in twenty years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Its scalability is first class. We can easily add more nodes to it. We have around three to four thousand users.
We have 100 people maintaining different applications. We don't currently have major plans to increase usage.
How are customer service and technical support?
Their technical support is excellent. If you have a P1 you call within the hour.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward. We didn't have any problems installing the new platform. The deployment took six months.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented it ourselves.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We didn't evaluate other options because we've been using Teradata for 20 years. We update versions.
What other advice do I have?
It's an excellent product. It's tried and tested with large organizations. The on-prem product is very powerful. Teradata has a cloud option. Both are good options. It depends on what your organizational plans are.
I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Data Engineer at a pharma/biotech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
It was easy for us to migrate from on-premise Teradata to AWS Teradata
Pros and Cons
- "I like writing preformance queries for preprocessing on AWS Cloud."
- "I would like more security and speed."
What is our primary use case?
We have been using the on-premise PostgreSQL, and most of our data comes from SAP. We have all our Oracle logs being pushed to Teradata, which is where we take the data, then skim it. We pass it through whatever it is we are using, then turn it back to the customers.
Therefore, our primary use case is to distribute the data across all types of commercial and personal consumers, making it available as fast as possible.
How has it helped my organization?
We are able to distribute Teradata in different regions to increase availability. As we are slowly moving everything to AWS cloud, we haven't had to worry about anything.
What is most valuable?
I like writing preformance queries for preprocessing on AWS Cloud.
What needs improvement?
I would like more security and speed. These days, everyone is not just moving to cloud, but they are moving to clout. In a multi-cloud environment, you have to be cognizant of data transfer, bandwidth, and egress charges, not just from a performance and scalability point of view, but also how to keep costs low.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is fine. We did not see a lot of downtime while migrating. It was a pretty clean transfer from on-premise to the cloud.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is great. AWS is all about the scalability.
How are customer service and technical support?
I have not used the technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Since we also use the AWS PostgreSQL, and some of our data is in there too, we came to the conclusion to move solutions within Teradata. Because already had the on-premise Teradata, it was easy for us to migrate from on-premise Teradata to AWS Teradata.
How was the initial setup?
The integration and configuration of Teradata in our AWS environment was great. This lead us to use all the databases after making the move to AWS Cloud in Teradata.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I don't know about the pricing and licensing.
What other advice do I have?
Initially, the whole infrastructure was on-premise. For the past year, we have started moving over to the cloud. The support that we receive from AWS is great.
The on-premise version is fairly to use. We don't have to scale it up nor scale it down.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Enterprise Programmes Architect at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
It is the core of our fundamental real-time reporting and operational planning.
Pros and Cons
- "It effectively has allowed us to remove over 20 portion copies of the data sets on other DB platforms for real-time operational reporting purposes."
- "The increasing volumes of data demand more and more performance."
What is most valuable?
Each has its strengths and weaknesses; this is why we use a blended environment. We have a holistic view which is very mature and thus, it is impossible to give a concise answer.
However, converting the Teradata from a pure BI to an ODS has been our greatest achievement; it effectively has allowed us to remove over 20 portion copies of the data sets on other DB platforms for real-time operational reporting purposes.
How has it helped my organization?
It is the core of our fundamental real-time reporting and operational planning. It has saved us over eight figures in the operational run costs, improved data quality and consistency as well as reduced our overall infrastructure support requirements.
What needs improvement?
The increasing volumes of data demand more and more performance. I truly believe that in five years, we will breach the effective limits of Teradata to perform in a multi-petabyte environment, i.e., without significant changes to its underlying architecture. If this occurs, we will be forced to migrate to a more traditional platform (such as IBM Informix).
For how long have I used the solution?
We have aggressively been using BI for over 20 years, with this evolving environment. Our most recent setup was about three years ago.
We have a broad range of BI and reporting tools, built on top of the Teradata Platform. It, currently, is the active Data Warehouse on 12.x , although we are migrating to 13.x after the New Year. This is supported by our IBM Congos (12), MicroStrategy (10) and the QlikView (12) reporting tools. We have also built extensive analytics on a Java base as well as some Microsoft BI integration.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have had stability issues quite frequently, but this is mostly with the Cognos environment, as it is growing beyond its limits in terms of the active user access. This is why we are considering migrating significant portions of our over 4000 users to a coded environment in place of the platform.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Again as mentioned before, there were scalability issues in regards to Cognos and the over 4000 users in a single active environment.
How are customer service and technical support?
Our in-house team is world-class, so we are not reliant on any external support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have moved from a distributed heterogeneous to a centralized homogeneous environment. Costs, data quality, sharing of information, and supportability were the reasons as to why we switched over to Teradata.
How was the initial setup?
The setup took place too long ago to remember.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Negotiate, negotiate, and negotiate some more. But long before you start to have a clear understanding of your direction, use patterns and check the roles that BI plays in the organization. Make sure you have the in-house skills to design and support the solution, as relying on external sources is extremely costly and tends to lock you into specific platforms, tools, and paradigms.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did a six-month review of potential candidates and options. Every three to five years, we re-evaluate the selection criteria and re-open the solution's design with an invitation to the vendors to offer an alternative. The process consumes about three months, but it has allowed us to keep current and, more importantly, to leverage off the process so as to ensure that we are getting the best value for our money.
What other advice do I have?
This comes back to understanding the what, why, and how of the solution. Once you understand that, then plan it accordingly and ensure you have sufficient time to address any of the surprises that could occur.
Each tool fills a niche and is used accordingly. I doubt if there is anything perfect out there, as each tool has its own considerations when being deployed.
Our greatest concern with Teradata is the performance impact of the OUTER RIGHT JOINS across a petabyte environment.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Managing Director at DNA Payroll Outsourcing
Superior solution for optimizing data
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features are the large volume of data and the structuring of the data to optimize it and get very optimal data warehouse solutions for customers."
- "Teradata needs to pay attention to the cloud-based solution to make sure it runs smoothly."
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features are the large volume of data and the structuring of the data to optimize it and get very optimal data warehouse solutions for customers.
What needs improvement?
An area that needs improvement is the cloud-based version of the solution because it's designed for on-prem and then transferred to the cloud version. Teradata needs to pay attention to the cloud-based solution to make sure it runs smoothly. In the next release, I would like Teradata to be cloud-agnostic in order to not limit customers' choices.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for fifteen to twenty years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Teradata is superior, stable, and has no problems.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Teradata is easily scalable.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is complex and requires specialized people for implementation.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The cost of running Teradata is quite high, but you get a good return on investment.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I've also evaluated Snowflake, which allows you to expose your data to multiple sources for monitoring without additional work.
What other advice do I have?
For the on-prem solution, there isn't really anyone who can compete with Teradata. I would rate it as eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator
End-End Technical Manager Teradata/Netezza/Greenplum DBA Group at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
You can schedule any testing you want to do in production.
Pros and Cons
- "In Data Lab, you can schedule any testing you want to do in production. You can take a small subset of data from production, copy it there, and run all your tests. It reduces your testing costs because it's all in the lab."
- "If I want to implement an upgrade, I'd like to see how it will be different. Ideally, Data Lab should help me test production items and also do future things. Future releases should be downloadable and testable in Data Lab."
What is our primary use case?
Teradata Data Lab is used for simulations.
What is most valuable?
In Data Lab, you can schedule any testing you want to do in production. You can take a small subset of data from production, copy it there, and run all your tests. It reduces your testing costs because it's all in the lab.
What needs improvement?
If I want to implement an upgrade, I'd like to see how it will be different. Ideally, Data Lab should help me test production items and also do future things. Future releases should be downloadable and testable in Data Lab.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Data Lab is very stable. It has been in the market for 25 years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Data Lab is highly scalable. My organization has a lot of users, but each company has more than 30,000 users. More than a thousand customers are using it, so there are more than 300,000 users out there.
How are customer service and support?
Teradata technical support is excellent.
How was the initial setup?
You don't have to do any installation. It is an out-of-the-box solution. It's low maintenance. We have one person, but if you need 24/7 coverage, you need four or five people.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We have a subscription. Nowadays, everything is cloud-based, so you pay for the subscription, and it is pretty affordable. There aren't any additional costs. So what you see is what you get.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Teradata Data Lab nine out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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