As I was preparing for this week’s kickoff with Sales, I thought a lot about the key messages that would help them tell the Teradata story. What occurred to me is that succeeding in business is like climbing a mountain. The view from the top is awe inspiring—but it can’t hold a candle to the satisfaction of conquering the challenges that could have meant failure.

The way up (and down!) can be fraught with disaster. So beforehand, you do your research, train your body and mind, and gather all the resources available to help you get there safely. Once underway, it’s really about decision making—making the best decision possible under any circumstance, at any particular moment.

Just like business, right?

I am a firm believer that success and more fundamentally, survival, depend on the advantage you achieve in the marketplace. When I boil it down, the first step up that mountain is to integrate everything in one place. Then it’s about what I can learn; the real insight I can get out of my information. And finally as a leader of the organization I act on that knowledge in ways that make us more successful and create market advantage. It’s really a simple proposition: Integration. Insight. Advantage.

For Teradata, it simply means helping our customers make the best decisions possible for their business so they successfully reach the top of every mountain they choose to climb. And that’s exactly where our efforts will be focused throughout 2012.

Darryl 

Welcome to the New Year and the ramp-up to the National Retail Federation show. The holidays are over now but as I think about this event I remember my days in retail when, as a sales VP, I would have sleepless nights over black Friday and wonder how the numbers would shape up when all was said and done.

NRF is still important to me—and Teradata. This year, Teradata will show you how to build an analytical eco-system that supports all areas of your business. Adding Aster Data and Aprimo to our portfolio, along with the strength of our partners, means we have never been in a better position to support cross- channel and big data analytics that enable retailers to garner more customer insight and leverage new opportunities from web, mobile, and social media.

Integrated Marketing Management is a burgeoning—and important—discipline in which Teradata and Aprimo thrive as demonstrated by placement in the Leaders quadrant of the latest Gartner, Inc. Integrated Marketing Management (IMM) Magic Quadrant report. In her Big Ideas session, Lisa Arthur, CMO, Aprimo will talk about IMM and the retail marketing revolution that’s heightening the pressure on organizations to understand consumer behavior and the vehicles that drive their path to purchase.

Teradata Aster will be present as well. So if you have ever been interested in understanding how much Twitter influence you have, for example, we can show you that and much more.

We look forward to NRF and hope you’ll visit us. I’ll be thinking about you and remembering the “good old days.”

Darryl 

Teradata, Aprimo and Aster customers are the best in the world – and we’re not the only ones who think so. Whether it’s best practices that provide models for others to aspire to or whether it’s innovative solutions that break new ground, solve problems and bring extraordinary benefits and financial results, our customers win the respected award programs.
Darryl 

Just take a look at the 2011 experience: 

Nationwide’s enterprise Customer Information Management Initiative (CIM) initiative offers a differentiated and exceptional customer experience, again demonstrating Nationwide’s industry leadership in both customer management and innovative use of technology. |More 

 Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA) won the 2011 CIO Asia Award and was named to the CIO Asia 100. LTA won for its PLANET (Planning for Land Transport Network) project, a data warehousing initiative designed to carry out advanced analytics about traffic and travel patterns in Singapore whether by car, bus or train. |More 

Kodak won a DemandGen Report award. Winning organizations are recognized for their accomplishments in driving revenue by upgrading lead generation and lead management programs and leveraging marketing automation technology. |More 

  Oklahoma Tax Commission was one of the top 20 finalists in the Excellence.Gov Awards for 2011 for its Tax Compliance Revolution Project with a Teradata foundation. |More 

 The LTA won the second annual Gartner BI Excellence Award for Asia Pacific. ROI for the project includes cost savings of 19% per year and productivity savings of 13% per year. |More  

Aprimo customer, International Speedway Corporation (ISC), the world leader in motorsports entertainment, received the Gold for Integrated Marketing in the Gartner/1to1 CRM Excellence Awards. |More 

 “Top innovators are changing the way business manages information,” said Information Management Magazine in its Nov/Dec 2011 edition announcing winners of its 2011 Innovation Solution Awards. “This award was created to recognize solutions that are groundbreaking and provide quantifiable business value.” The State of Michigan and Teradata won the BI category.|More  

 In the 2011 InformationWeek 500 Rankings – “The Very Best Business Technology Innovators,” customer Centene ranked #22.

 The National Association of State CIO’s (NASCIO) honored the State of Michigan with 5 of its 2011 Recognition Awards, including one with Teradata – the award for Data, Information and Knowledge Management.

 |More  

 Lt Col Walter Nichols of USTRANSCOM was a finalist for TechAmerica Foundation Award for Program Manager of the Year.
|More  

  Customers McCain Foods and State of Michigan are winners with Teradata in the Ventana Research 2011 Leadership Awards. McCain Foods CIO Roman Coba has won the CIO category. The State of Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget won the BI category. Congratulations to customer Westpac Banking, submitted by Teradata partner Informatica and named the overall IT Leader for 2011. |More  

Customer MLC & NAB Wealth Won a Bronze in the 2011 NCDM Database Excellence Awards BtoB Marketing Category - Entering an awards program for the first time and coming up a winner, MLC is the wealth management division of long-term Teradata customer National Australia Bank (NAB). The prestigious NCDM Database Excellence Awards honor organizations that demonstrate ingenuity and creativity in leveraging their customer data.

Say "social media" today and it doesn't elicit the same response it did several years ago when many organizations wondered if it was a viable business strategy worth time and energy. Now, we all get it. Yes, there's value in social media engagement. But what's new and innovative today? Will social software and analytics give companies that extra edge? Do the improvements in social networking software constitute that new innovative "thing" to help businesses leapfrog over the competition and to the top of the leader board?

Mzinga, a leading provider of social solutions, definitely believes that they have the secret sauce to help organizations increase revenue and lower costs. Making this happen for their customers requires innovative technology that helps Mzinga manage their big data volumes so user metrics are delivered in a timely manner. A company that can analyze and uncover patterns within social networks in minutes versus days already has an advantage over the competition. They are that much closer to better understanding their customers and creating more value, more loyalty.

I am proud to say that the Teradata Aster MapReduce Appliance is part of Mzinga's analytical infrastructure. Aster technology is helping Mzinga's customers understand the impact of social media with pinpoint accuracy. They have a complete picture so they can analyze and relate the data to actual customer behavior.

What Mzinga represents is, indeed, a giant step in the direction of giving companies competitive advantage. Managing customer relationships at that level creates real business value. Companies that strive for data equity by using cutting edge analytic technology will be the industry leaders.

How will you socialize your data and win your race?

Darryl 

Teradata University Network Executive Director Michael Goul is passing the leadership baton, as he moves on after three years of service in building the Teradata University Network to a significant point in its existence. We appreciate Mike’s contributions. Begun as a free teaching portal where Teradata and its business partners provided software, real-world business conditions, and very large data sets to academics and students, Teradata University Network is now a valued learning resource in more than 1,600 universities in 90 countries. More important than its great reach is the expansion of its mission to include a greater role in ensuring that businesses have access to data analytics workers with the necessary knowledge and skills to be effective.

It is through Mike’s efforts, and those of his predecessors Barb Wixom and founding director Hugh Watson, that Teradata University Network has come to this place. These people are the leaders who have been at the forefront for many years, working to train university students to be break-through thinkers and doers who use data to create business value. Mike will continue to serve on the Teradata University Network advisory board as a Fellow and continue his work to incorporate business intelligence into core IT and business curricula.

 Join me in extending a warm welcome to the new Executive Director, Paul Gray. Paul is well respected as one of the founders and creators of decision support system database curriculum and is a distinguished professor emeritus of Claremont Graduate University. You might want to take a minute to check out the Paul Gray PC Museum, home to many of the industry’s first computers. As a senior advisory board member for several years, Paul is well acquainted with the mission of Teradata University Network. As the number of data-driven businesses proliferate and the sources of data and the tools to analyze data grow, we’re fortunate to have Paul at the helm of Teradata University Network as it continues to foster the business acumen and technical expertise that companies need to integrate, investigate and implement data analytics.

Darryl 

Earlier this month Teradata received the highest honor, the Platinum Award, from Gaming & Leisure magazine as part of the G&L Gaming & Hospitality Awards for 2011. We appreciate this recognition from the industry for our efforts to help gaming companies mine the gold that is in their data.

At one time, companies viewed data as a cost – a by-product of their activities that then had to be stored and managed. Today, data analytics is firmly established as the silver lining for companies seeking competitive advantage. Consider how these gaming industry leaders have gained from bringing together information from across their enterprises:

• Anschutz Entertainment Group is managing venue performance and effective cross-selling.
• Harrah’s Entertainment is ensuring its VIP hosts are interacting with customers who have the greatest revenue potential.
• Isle of Capri Casinos is anticipating guests’ needs and exceeding their expectations.
• Station Casinos is designing, developing, and deploying highly personalized marketing and promotional campaigns.

Judges for the G&L Gaming & Hospitality Awards were an august group – the industry thought leaders who collectively represent the vast majority of all gaming technology spend in North America. We look forward to continuing our partnership and driving innovation and profitability with our gaming customers – and all of our customers – for years to come.

Darryl 

What a great success!

The 2011 Teradata PARTNERS User Group Conference & Expo is now history and by any standard it was a great success. I want to thank our customers, partners, associates and all of our speakers for their valued contributions.

A vast army of analytic experts are returning to their organizations better able to put their data to work for real value. By doing so, they create data equity – equity that has measurable and quantifiable value to their companies. They are now empowered to turn the dead data lying around their organization into living data - making it useful and relevant to everyone.

The media and key BI influencers were very busy covering our activities and I’d like to share a few of my favorite statements.

• In a Wayne Gretzky analogy, a major analyst firm said, “Teradata keeps moving the puck forward, while the competition skates to where the puck used to be.”
   
• “I had the best time at the Teradata User conference. What a wonderful, sane, smart group of people,” said a journalist from SiliconAngle.
   
• “With these latest moves, Teradata continues to keep some distance between itself and the rest of the data warehousing pack in terms of advanced features and the size and influence of its customer base,” stated InformationWeek 
   
•  “Among the hottest tech trends is the field of data analytics, where Teradata has long been a leader. With the explosion of technology has come a mass influx of data to be collected and analyzed. Teradata helps companies manage and mine that data for making better business decisions,” reported Investor’s Business Daily.

Conference attendance was up from previous years, as attendees enjoyed access to hundreds of business and technical sessions led by industry leaders, plus in-depth workshops, industry-specific presentations, and exposure to the latest products and services in the expo hall. Networking opportunities abounded, with thousands of professionals active in data warehousing and associated technologies.

Thanks to our dedicated group of customers that help guide the conference content, and thanks to all who joined us in San Diego you for making this one of our best ever conferences. My challenge to each of you is take the knowledge gained from PARTNERS and put it to work to help your organization leverage all of your data for competitive advantage. Then come to DC next year and share your story of analytic success!

Darryl