Real-Time Operational Intelligence Gains Momentum in Europe

BERLIN, April 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC), the global leader in enterprise data warehousing today announced that active data warehousing, a term used synonymously with real-time operational intelligence, is gaining momentum among organizations across Europe. In addition, research shows that the adoption of leading-edge technologies such as web analytics and integrated web intelligence is rising.

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An active data warehouse provides strategic and tactical intelligence throughout the enterprise, enabling hundreds of front-line employees to make smarter, more competitive decisions through information access, analysis and predictive analytics in near real time. According to a new IDC white paper sponsored by Teradata(1), 26 percent of responding organizations in various industries across Europe are using active data warehousing.

Across industries, sectors and organizations evaluated in IDC's research, the primary factors driving the need for real-time intelligence are increased competition, deregulation and reregulation for compliance reasons. Business intelligence and data warehousing provide the technological capabilities to both automate and support decision-making processes.

"In today's business environment, a broad range of users from the executive level to call center agents have urgent information needs that can only be satisfied by comparing data that describe what is happening right now with data that describe what has happened in the past.  This requirement - to load data in near real-time, combine it with large volumes of historical data and then produce meaningful insight in seconds or even milliseconds - demands sophisticated data warehousing technologies," said Martin Willcox, Director, Platform and Solutions Marketing, Europe Middle East & Africa.

Most organizations today operate in a 24X7 environment, with an increasing need for decision support in real time. In order to meet time-critical information needs and act on opportunities, more organizations are monitoring business activities in real time. They can then execute quickly on predefined events and measures in response, which may involve human intervention – or actions taken automatically. Monitored events, the executive brief indicates, are typically related to financial management, e.g. monitoring large transactions outside risk guidelines, invoices or payables, changes to customer profiles as well as inventory and availability.

"High-performance database technology underpins the deployment of any event-driven solution and Teradata's parallel database technology is widely acknowledged to be the best in the industry. In addition, the company is rapidly expanding its portfolio of products and services for real-time analytics," said Martin Willcox, director of architecture services, Teradata.

Social web analytics are evolving rapidly

Across the worldwide web, vast volumes of data are structured very differently from information in relational databases. Text mining technology helps to make the data more useable by extracting significant words and phrases from sources such as email, customer satisfaction surveys, call center interactions and social web applications like message boards and blogs. As these technologies are becoming increasingly important for capturing customer sentiments they need to better interoperate with customer relationship management (CRM) applications to enhance dynamic customer profiles. According to the IDC executive brief, more than 22 percent of organizations are already mining customer feedback supplied via Facebook, Twitter and other social media, while nearly half of them are either evaluating or planning to utilize it.

"Corporations are aware that the web is both a new information source and a point-of-contact where customers expect prompt and personalized service. Text mining is gaining momentum as a method for capturing feedback, not only in email conversations with the customer but increasingly in social media," said Willcox. "Clearly, the next step is to integrate this new data into existing data models, thus making analytically enhanced customer profiles available to business users in real time." The IDC Executive Brief is available online and may be downloaded here.

About Teradata

Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC) is the world's largest company solely focused on raising intelligence and achieving enterprise agility through its database software, enterprise data warehousing, data warehouse appliances, consulting, and enterprise analytics. Visit Teradata on the web at www.teradata.com.

Teradata is a trademark or registered trademark of Teradata Corporation in the United States and other countries.

(1) IDC paper sponsored by Teradata, "Active Information in EMEA," Alys Woodward, IDC Executive Brief, April 2010

SOURCE Teradata Corporation