Teradata predicts regulation driven growth

Corporate data volumes - particularly in the finance sector - could explode over the next few years, which is good news for data warehouse providers.

At its recent user conference in Melbourne, Teradata, the data warehouse unit of American IT services heavyweight NCR, predicted that volumes could increase tenfold in some industries within five years.

That growth will be driven by developments such as 3G cellphone services and radio-frequency identification in retail and distribution.

The finance sector, meanwhile, is seeing the introduction of a host of international regulatory and compliance regimes. The new rules are driving an explosion of data that must be stored and explored.

Teradata Australia and New Zealand manager Julian Beavis said that since most organisations had built their IT infrastructure and tackled their data-quality issues, data mining was now a real prospect.

"Everyone has done the [enterprise resource planning] thing, so everyone is very efficient," he said.

"Now they need to tune that machine, find out what to do with their customers and what sells."

Beavis said enterprise data warehouses, which encompassed all the data in the business, allowed companies to use the information to drive strategy.

And rather than simply owning the data, IT departments were being put into a support role for savvy business managers.

"In most successful companies, you will find a strong leader setting the pace and direction, and the technology is there to support the business," he said.

Teradata targets big customers who need a long-term view of large volumes of data.

That include retailers The Warehouse and Progressive Enterprises, all but one of the major Australasian banks and, with Vodafone New Zealand coming on board last year, all the major Australasian telcos apart from Telecom.

In the March quarter, Teradata's revenue jumped 14 per cent to US$350 million ($494 million), as operating profit of US$72 million offset losses in other divisions. Parent NCR posted a profit of US$30 million on revenue of US$1.34 billion, compared with a US$5 million loss the previous year.

Teradata does not break out results by country, but Beavis said the local results were "at least as good".