ENGINEERING

New technology within Teradata Unified Data Architecture provides secure, self-service access and analysis on data in Hadoop

Teradata is the first to offer business analysts streamlined, self-service, cost-effective access to Apache Hadoop for quicker and smarter strategic business decisions with Teradata Enterprise Access for Hadoop. A part of the Teradata Unified Data Architecture, this new technology enables business analysts to reach through Teradata directly into Hadoop to find new business value from the analysis of big, diverse data.

Teradata Enterprise Access for Hadoop includes two new, innovative features that make access to data in Hadoop easy and secure for business analysts across the enterprise - Teradata smart loader for Hadoop and Teradata SQL-H. Teradata Enterprise Access for Hadoop is the first solution to provide organizations with robust security, workload management, and comprehensive standard ANSI SQL support on Apache Hadoop. Working within the Teradata Unified Data Architecture, Teradata Enterprise Access for Hadoop removes these obstacles or bottlenecks allowing organizations more choices for implementation of their unified data architecture. Because of the flexibility that Teradata offers, organizations are better able to build complete, best of breed, and cost-effective analytic enterprise architectures that are easy to use and manage.

The Teradata Unified Data Architecture, which was previously announced, brings together Teradata, Teradata Aster, and Hadoop technology as well as best-of-breed partner tools to create a cohesive architecture. This new best-of-breed architecture makes Teradata the first vendor to provide a truly comprehensive framework to handle all types of data and any analytic techniques.

“Today’s announcement of Teradata Enterprise Access for Hadoop is another example of our aggressive commitment to building out the Teradata Unified Data Architecture,” said Scott Gnau, president, Teradata Labs. “Teradata Enterprise Access for Hadoop empowers organizations to dig deeply into files and data residing in Hadoop and combine the data with production business data for analyses – and action.”

Data scientists, business analysts, enterprise architects, developers, and IT managers are eager to find ways to maximize the value of all their data assets. They are seeking effective means to refine the raw data stored in Hadoop and combine the intelligence with production business data. However, Hadoop has presented the industry with challenges related to security, standards, and a shortage of talented data scientists. The deployment of the Teradata Enterprise Access for Hadoop will enable data scientists to be set free from application development to work on high-value activities. In addition, data scientists can gain a better understanding of the lineage of the data to determine its reliability and accuracy.

“As a key component of the Unified Data Architecture, Hortonworks Data Platform provides a reliable Apache Hadoop distribution for enterprise users,” said Bob Page, vice president, products, Hortonworks. “The deep integration of Hortonworks Data Platform with both the Teradata data warehouse and Teradata Aster discovery platform provides users with easy access to data, while giving enterprise IT the advanced security it requires.”

Having new insights into data is interesting, but it becomes truly valuable when organizations can make real-time decisions based on that knowledge. To achieve this goal, all technology and data within the Teradata Unified Data Architecture, including Hadoop, need to interact with an integrated data warehouse. A cornerstone of the Unified Data Architecture, the integrated data warehouse enables real-time delivery of intelligence to front line decision-makers.

The two new components of Teradata Enterprise Access for Hadoop include:
Teradata Studio with Smart Loader for Hadoop – for the first time, business analysts have point-and-click convenience to easily browse and move data between Teradata and Hadoop for analysis and self-service business intelligence. Business users are now able to load, govern, access, and share data seamlessly in and out of Hadoop - enabling ad-hoc reporting and analysis in a secure and trusted Teradata data warehouse environment. Teradata is capable of supporting thousands of concurrent end-users with the most complete and powerful analytic engine in the market. The Teradata Studio with Smart Loader for Hadoop supports Hortonworks Data Platform and Cloudera Distribution, giving customers the ability to choose between the two leading commercial distributions of Hadoop.

Teradata SQL-H – Teradata SQL-H gives any user or application across the enterprise direct, on-the-fly access to data stored within Hadoop through standard ANSI SQL, leveraging the security, workload management, and performance of the Teradata data warehouse. This allows users to quickly query the data where it lies - easily combining data from Hadoop as needed with production data in the Teradata data warehouse to expand and enrich their insights. With Teradata SQL-H, analytics run directly in-memory on Teradata with only the data required for a query being pulled from Hadoop—boosting performance—while lowering costs associated with data movement and replication. Teradata SQL-H supports Hortonworks Data Platform, leveraging the open-source Apache HCatalog project for intelligent data access.

Telecommunications industry use case
A telecommunications company is trying to understand why customers are defecting to other providers. To do so, they must analyze data from across the business, including landline, wireless service, television service, Internet service, and users of premium movie channels. The challenge is that the data are in multiple repositories and formats. Working within the Unified Data Architecture and using Teradata Enterprise Access for Hadoop, business analysts are able to easily reach into Hadoop for social media sentiment data, web logs and other diverse, big data and combine it with customer transaction and profitability information in the data warehouse for self-service analysis. The analysis of the consolidated data offers a clear, high-definition picture of the customers’ behavior prior to defection. The telecommunications company can take immediate action to save the customer, if they are profitable.

Teradata Enterprise Access for Hadoop will be available by the end of second quarter, 2013. 

Teradata Unified Data Architecture for the future Teradata is the leader in helping unify best-in-class data and analytic platforms for creating deep business insights and competitive advantage. Not only is Teradata delivering on this promise today, but it is committed to the vision of the Teradata Unified Data Architecture for the future.

Gartner, one of the first industry analyst groups to spot this trend, coined the term “logical data warehouse,” an approach Teradata Unified Data Architecture utilizes. Gartner analysts, Mark A. Beyer, and Roxane Edjlali, reported, “Importantly, the Logical Data Warehouse (LDW) promotes the concept of "best-fit engineering," in which each part of the overall analytics data management infrastructure uses the most appropriate solution based upon the expected service delivery requirements. Organizations report that these hybrid approaches are already reducing costs and time to delivery when changes or additions in the warehouse are required.” Gartner report, “The Future of Data Management for Analytics Is the Logical Data Warehouse,” February 28, 2013.

A key enabler of the Teradata vision for unified data is Teradata Unity, an integrated product portfolio that turns a multi-system Teradata environment into an orchestrated ecosystem. It delivers transparent access, high-speed data loading, intelligent data movement, and end-to-end monitoring, as well as control for Teradata multi-system environments. Each component underscores Teradata’s continued commitment to solving the challenges customers face in trying to simplify what are often complex data-driven environments.

“Teradata is committed to offering its customers choices in how they integrate all their data, and build out their unified architectures with the best, most effective hardware and software  This empowers customers  to not only meet today’s requirements, but to constantly innovate for future needs,” said Scott Gnau, president, Teradata Labs.

According to Gnau, “We designed the Unified Data Architecture to be flexible enough to meet the individual needs of customers. It allows integration of open source Apache Hadoop with the Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse and all Teradata appliances. The result is an analytic environment capable of meeting the operational and strategic needs of thousands of users, running hundreds of applications, on any data, at any time.”