The company says the platform's optimized but flexible mix of configured solid state (SSD) and hard disk drives (HDD) meets a broader range of customer analytic needs.
The mix of storage in the company's EDW system is managed by Teradata Virtual Storage management software. The company says multiple tiers of main memory and high speed and high capacity devices bring flexibility for uses including long range planning and reporting as well as real time intelligence for "front line employees."
The system monitors data access and usage and moves "hot" data to the higher performance solid-state drives. Less active data is stored on more economical hard disk drives.
SSD is arriving in more data management hardware and services in part because of technology advances and manufacturing economies of scale. The market intelligence firm DRAMeXchange reports this month that mainstream technology SSD prices could fall below $1 per GB later this year, an awaited hurdle in pricing for the high-speed devices.
Teradata says one customer is using its hybrid storage to process data from sensors on machines at multiple sites on production lines and increase manufacturing yield with quick adjustments to optimize production flow.
Another customer that provides phone service anticipates faster customer intelligence to reduce churn through a mix of current interaction data and "cold" data from long-term histories.
Teradata's Active EDW supports systems starting at six terabytes and can scale to 60 petabytes of user data. Technology includes Intel Xeon multi-core processors, NetApp HDD and Sandisk SSD storage.
Jim Ericson is editorial director of Information Management, a SourceMedia publication. You can reach him at Jim.Ericson@sourcemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @jimericson.
