Teradata powers breakthrough innovation with Azure Data Lake and trusted AI and machine learning services

The advantage of VantageCloud

Today more than ever, information helps the largest enterprises make better decisions, develop more successful strategies, and drive more business value. Teradata helps organizations collect and turn raw business data into actionable information with its VantageCloud platform, which accelerates data-driven decision making for customers and provides flexible deployment options that can harmonize data across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises systems.

VantageCloud is a complete cloud analytics and data platform that’s supplemented by a deep and powerful integration with Microsoft Azure. Lisa Stewart, Teradata Senior Vice President of Worldwide Partners and Alliances, says the company made the decision to partner with Microsoft in large part based on the power and ubiquity of Azure hosting infrastructure and services. “Enterprises recognize the potential of their data. They just need to unlock it. We believe that we have a data and analytics capability second to none, and the fact that we run on Azure only makes the solution more powerful,” she says.

The company also considered the question of data gravity and the costs organizations incur when trying to harmonize data or move it for analysis. VantageCloud takes analytics to where the data resides, which for many of its customers is Azure. “We analyze vast amounts of every type of data for organizations on nearly every continent on earth,” says Stewart. “We touch every vertical market space you can think of across countless countries and are highly aligned to the industry clouds which Microsoft takes to market today.”

The Azure advantage

VantageCloud uses specialized Azure services to increase its ability to deliver harmonized data, trusted AI and machine learning, and faster innovation for better decision making. VantageCloud uses Azure as a foundation, natively integrating with a variety of scalable, highly available Azure compute and storage services. Customers can ingest data using Azure Data Factory directing into VantageCloud on Azure, in addition to query their structured and unstructured data in Azure Data Lake in place.  

With Teradata VantageCloud Lake on Azure, organizations can harness the power of new technologies, including generative AI, to innovate faster, scale smarter, and govern better. They can also take advantage of Teradata’s powerful ClearScape Analytics™ within VantageCloud, which runs on highly performant Azure virtual machines and Azure Premium SSD storage. Together, ClearScape Analytics and Azure Machine Learning simplify and accelerate the machine learning life cycle through the most robust analytic capabilities for end-to-end analytic pipelines, including data preparation, model training, and operationalizing at scale. 

Scalability for all these critical resources is crucial. But VantageCloud customers look for consistently high performance regardless of where or how the solution is deployed, and here VantageCloud delivers an advantage by tapping into the rapid and cost-efficient scale in Azure. “Azure offers so many features that are critical to our ability to perform analytics at scale, including the ability to bring additional virtual machines into the pool automatically or increase premium storage as required,” says Neeraj Jain, Director of Product Management at Teradata. Shared Azure Disk Storage helps Teradata provide a highly available, resilient, and scalable cloud analytics and data platform for business-critical enterprise applications. This architecture helps deliver what Jain refers to as “VantageCloud’s secret sauce—its ability to query petabytes of data with consistent performance and incredible speed and efficiency.” 

Consistent, high performance 

Thanks to a global network of Azure datacenters, Teradata has the required compute and storage resources in close physical proximity to customers’ data, supporting the low-latency, high-availability service its customers demand. Accelerated networking and high-speed access rank high on the list of priorities for companies with hybrid infrastructure. And for many VantageCloud customers, the strong compliance support in Azure and related Microsoft services helps save time and effort. Compliance features provide certification in more than 50 countries and regions and for key industry segments, making it quicker and easier for staff to ensure their organization meets internal, industry, and government mandates for data storage and transmission. 

And there’s a lot of data involved. “We’re talking petabytes of data and millions of queries every day. That’s the level we’re operating at,” says Jain. “Our ability to provide sub-second performance at scale and consistently deliver the lowest cost per query to our customers is why enterprises select Teradata.” Delivering VantageCloud and VantageCloud Lake on Azure helps Teradata meet key business requirements. “We’re excited to be on Azure, using Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Azure Data Lake, and many more Azure services. We’ll continue to use as many Azure services as we can in our VantageCloud platform to increase the scale, availability, and breadth of features that make us the best cloud analytics and data platform out there.” 

The migration process 

Teradata is a cloud-first organization that supports enterprises’ digital transformations and modernization journeys. “Our customers have become cloud-first organizations,” says Jain. “We still have an on-premises base, but they’re all on journeys to the cloud.”

Stewart notes that Teradata’s collaborative relationship with Microsoft has proved effective with its migration efforts. “Microsoft is a partner who feels like an extension of our team. Not only does Microsoft wrap you in resources, but it wants to understand what’s working not working with Azure, and most importantly, where does Azure need to go in the next decade to better support its ISV partners, like Teradata.” 

And that relationship with Microsoft and the success of its VantageCloud platform on Azure pays dividends with Teradata’s customers. “When customers choose VantageCloud or VantageCloud Lake on Azure, they know they’re working with two companies that deeply understand the complexities of performing analytics at enterprise scale,” says Stewart. “Our partnership unites one of the most trusted names in the cloud in Microsoft Azure with one of the most trusted names in analytics in Teradata. It’s a powerful combination.” Jain adds, “The technology, the scale, the reach that Azure unlocks for us is unique. The trust that our customers have in Microsoft in their cloud journey is similar to the trust they have in Teradata; it’s a long-term, strategic partnership.”

Focusing on business value

Jain is enthusiastic about how VantageCloud and Azure help deliver the performance he needs. However, he adds that how VantageCloud works—whether it’s in Azure, a hybrid environment, or on-premises—is far less important for Teradata customers than the value it delivers for their businesses. “VantageCloud, VantageCloud Lake, and ClearScape Analytics aren’t data services. They’re a data story,” he says. “They’re a place where you can extract the maximum value from your data with our best-in-class data harmonization and trusted AI and machine learning capabilities.” Stewart agrees, pointing out that customers welcome the opportunity to not have to worry about where their data resides, what form it’s in, or where and how they’re going to store it. “They don’t need to worry because VantageCloud will go in, find the data, and query it right where the data resides.” She adds, “By also integrating with Azure Machine Learning, we give customers the ability to model their data and gain real insights from it to transform how businesses work and people live through the power of data. From reducing the carbon footprint for a major airline to proactively maintaining lifesaving diagnostic machines for hundreds of healthcare organizations worldwide, the work we’re doing together with Microsoft delivers meaningful impact.”

There are additional benefits from the combination of Teradata’s VantageCloud, VantageCloud Lake, and ClearScape Analytics with the broader Azure and Microsoft 365 ecosystem. “We’re committed to connecting and integrating with the Azure services that our customers already know and love,” Stewart says. “When we can tap into the capabilities of Azure services to help our customers harness the true power of their data, the possibilities are endless.”

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