Teradata Improves Analytics for Business Users

New capabilities from SAS and Visual Numerics integrated withTeradata Warehouse Miner help streamline the data mining process
MIAMISBURG, Ohio — Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC), the global leader in enterprise data warehousing, today introduced Teradata Warehouse Miner 5.2, which embeds 50 new statistical data mining functions from its partners into the Teradata Database to accelerate the data mining process. Data mining is a powerful technology that discovers patterns in customer, financial and operational data that can provide valuable business insights.

“The data mining statistical functions from our partners, SAS and Visual Numerics, can now be executed within the database, leveraging Teradata’s high-speed parallel processing power. The results derived from executing the analytics enable our customers to raise the intelligence of their enterprises,” said Scott Gnau, chief development officer, Teradata. “Our customers can now use data mining for more than long-range strategic planning; the results of the predictive analytics can be infused in real time into operational applications to support front-line business operations.”

Teradata Warehouse Miner enhancements are supported by the recently announced SAS® Scoring Accelerator for Teradata. An initial benchmark of the SAS Scoring Accelerator for Teradata demonstrated the ability to process the number of records 45 times faster than the traditional scoring method. The SAS Scoring Accelerator for Teradata also eliminates the need for manual translation of the SAS scoring code into SQL, or structured query language. This speed and technology integration significantly increases the development and deployment of more SAS analytical models in Teradata, enabling critical business decisions in real time.

“Teradata’s new functionality and our recently released SAS Scoring Accelerator are integrated and complementary solutions,” said Keith Collins, chief technology officer at SAS. “Working together, we provide the speed that other vendors are unable to match. We accelerate and automate advanced analytics for our joint customers. SAS Scoring Accelerator will drive more SAS Enterprise Miner™ models into the Teradata database, providing analytic insights that allow our customers to make accurate, data-driven decisions.”

“We are committed to data mining because of the value it provides — it has helped Warner Home Video to improve forecasting,” said Thomas Tileston, vice president, Business Decision Support, Warner Home Video. “As one of the pioneers of SAS in-database scoring, we believe Teradata’s approach in leveraging partner functions will further accelerate the ability of businesses to understand their customers and respond to their needs.”

Real-time analytics can dramatically enhance a company’s relationships with its consumers. For example, if a consumer calls the customer care center after a recent purchase, the call center representative needs to have an up-to-date history on the consumer’s online, phone, direct mail and store buying activities. Advanced analytics applications can look at all these points of contact and, in real time, provide the representative with the “next best offer” or product recommendation customized to meet the consumer’s needs. Incomplete or stale analytic information on the consumer’s recently purchased activities places the retailer in an embarrassing position or worse, it may drive the consumer to a competitor.

The ability to provide analytics to support the real-time business needs of customers has been achieved by embedding data mining models and methods as user-defined functions (UDFs) within Teradata. Teradata Warehouse Miner’s UDF enhancements work like an index from which users can select prepackaged functions which are linked to the detailed data. In a Windows desktop environment, business users can now click, drag and drop the needed analytic function from a list of UDFs and run it against the appropriate detailed data in the warehouse without wasting time by manual coding the function or moving data between systems. The value of UDFs is that they are shareable and reusable among business users, which delivers analytic consistency across the business.

“The integration of Visual Numerics’ statistical techniques as UDFs will help our joint customers rapidly solve complex problems with the accuracy of high-powered analytics,” said Phil Fraher, chief executive officer, Visual Numerics. “Through our collaboration, customers can take advantage of the leading technology to drive intelligence deeper into the enterprise, at faster and faster speeds.”

“I’m impressed that Teradata has made it possible for partners, such as SAS and Visual Numerics, to integrate custom analytical functions into the Teradata Database. This will make it easier for analytic modelers to execute tasks within the Teradata environment instead of having to convert everything to SQL. This will save time and costs and make Teradata a preferred platform for running analytic models,” says Wayne Eckerson, director of TDWI Research at The Data Warehousing Institute.