Teradata/Netezza/Tesco kerfuffle
Netezza evidently put out a press release bragging of a competitive replacement of Teradata at UK retailing giant Tesco. That press release cannot be now found on Netezza’s site, but it lives on elsewhere. Meanwhile, Teradata has put out a press release in which Tesco is quoted emphatically contradicting what it is quoted as saying in the Netezza press release. While I haven’t discussed this with Netezza, my guess is that somebody there got a little overenthusiastic in advance of their user conference next week and thought they’d gotten a permission they really hadn’t.
Beyond that, I’d note that the Netezza quote made reference to around 25 heavy analytical users, while the Teradata quote talked of 8000 people across more than 2000 suppliers.
The full Tesco quote in the Netezza release was:
Marcel Borlin, Programme Manager at Tesco explains, “We examined a number of vendors in great detail. We were looking to realise savings; not only on the purchase cost, but on the total cost of ownership too. The physical footprint and power and cooling requirements in the data centre were also important factors. The Netezza system needs literally a fraction of the space, power and cooling of our existing systems. We also needed better performance than our current Teradata platform can offer, and our Netezza system is performing very well on both queries and data loads; up to five times faster.”
“We currently have around 25 heavy analytical users running large queries on Netezza,” continued Borlin. “They are analysing transactional discrepancies across millions of items and item movements every day, right through the supply chain; from stores to distribution centres. The specific application is designed to find wastage such as stolen, destroyed, out-of-date or lost items. It is an important function, as it affects the financial position of the Company. Yet, on the Teradata platform we had to allocate time slots for running these analyses, or the system would grind to a halt.”
Meanwhile, the Teradata Tesco quote reads:
“The enterprise data warehouse (EDW) on Teradata is central to the Tesco business intelligence strategy delivering both management information and analytical services to the 13 countries that Tesco operates in as well as our Sourcing Centres and Service Centre in India,” said Chris Brocklesby, UK IT Director.
“Tesco is satisfied with the consistently high performance delivered by Teradata and particularly its proven ability to run a mixed workload of management information and complex analytics,” added Marcel Borlin, Programme Manager at Tesco. “As part of our ongoing programme to evaluate different technologies and architectures, we have deployed some analytical users on a small Netezza system which has been reported in the press recently. This implementation does not reflect any dissatisfaction with Teradata. Tesco continues to add new applications to the Teradata EDW which has now grown to 60 terabytes. The EDW is providing Management Information Systems for Commercial Reporting, Supply Chain and Stores as well as Tescolink thereby providing information to 8000 people across more than 2000 suppliers.”
“The Teradata EDW delivers significant business value by providing a single integrated view of the Tesco business and Tesco is committed to further developing our relationship with Teradata as a strategic partner,” said Chris Brocklesby.
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[…] Many Teradata customers are buying newer analytic DBMS as well. But they aren’t throwing out Teradata. Most stories of Teradata replacements are misunderstandings. […]
Oops, sounds like someone upset the “old boys” relationship at board level that Teradata often maintains, hence stifling what was probably the original true story !