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