Businesses Can Now Utilize Larger and Less Expensive Disk Drives

               without the Associated Performance Issues

DAYTON, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 23, 2007--Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation (NYSE:NCR), announced that it has launched a new "Multi-Temperature" data warehouse consulting service that enables companies to utilize larger, less expensive disk drives without sacrificing user performance.

In a Multi-Temperature environment, the Teradata(R) Warehouse "self-manages" both frequently accessed "hot" and less frequently accessed "cooler" data. By sharing and managing data across temperature ranges, applications accessing hot data can maintain required performance levels while rarely accessed data is still available to users but with reduced system priority.

Many firms buy cheaper, high-capacity disk drives, only to have the IT staff recommend against using all the available disk capacity in order to maintain existing performance requirements for business users. For the past several years, disk drives have doubled in capacity roughly every 12 to 18 months. However, the disk I/O, or the speed to access and move data to the server, has not kept pace with the capacity growth of disk drives. The result is that servers can't adequately utilize the additional disk drive capacity without significant performance issues.

"Teradata's innovative technology enables our customers to access data when needed and at a lower cost because data no longer needs to be moved or placed in different storage mediums--it can all be kept in the data warehouse for better business decision-making," said Randy Lea, vice president of Teradata products and services marketing. "The advantage is that the data is managed by business rules, not physical data placement. For instance, the legal department could be given immediate or priority access to seven years of consumer telephone call records or invoices while another department's request is pushed out to nightly batch processing."

Teradata's Multi-Temperature data warehouse dynamically manages system resources, enabling businesses to take advantage of larger disk capacities, without sacrificing query performance for more demanding applications that support business operations and strategic planning. It utilizes unique workload management capabilities and services in Teradata to balance and prioritize data warehouse resources.

"The Teradata Multi-Temperature data warehouse provides our customers the ability to use the affordable large capacity drives while saving, accessing and using massive amounts of historical data in the data warehouse. This is possible at the same time as the data warehouse meets the demands of business users. Many of our competitors sell 'high-capacity' systems without highlighting that they are also 'low performing,'" said Lea. "Our workload management approach allows data to be accessed based on the priority of application or user rather than the manual physical data placement techniques promoted by some of our competitors."

Gartner analysts Mark A. Beyer and Donald Feinberg highlight the benefits of workload management in a recent research report, titled "Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems 2006," Sept. 12, 2006. "Data warehouses are serving in an increasingly mixed workload capacity in which deep-mining analysts, exploring business analysts running less-structured but equally complex queries and fast-running tactical queries all compete for central processing unit memory and disk access with differing service-level expectations." The report also indicated, "During the next three years, mixed workload performance will become the single most important performance issue in data warehousing."

Before the advent of Multi-Temperature data warehousing, some companies managed storage costs by moving less frequently accessed data to cheaper mediums such as tape, optical drive or CD-ROM. With this approach, however, data must be reloaded into the data warehouse in order to access or analyze it--a time-consuming approach.

Multi-Temperature data warehousing allows large volumes of infrequently accessed data, most of which may have been stored offline, to be kept in the data warehouse. Maintaining this additional historical data in the warehouse can result in benefits such as improved insight into trends, customer service, product-defect cycles, and regulatory compliance. Whether for regulatory compliance purposes or to increase enterprise competitiveness, businesses in virtually all industries are identifying good uses for the onslaught of disk capacity.

For example, banks are dependent on both hot and cold data. Recently accessed hot data is typically used for campaign management, offer management and near real-time detection of fraudulent activity. Banks also use cooler, detailed customer transaction data dating back more than five years for predictive modeling of consumer banking habits, and seven or more years for auditing. Enterprise risk management regulations and audit requirements need Multi-Temperature data to run analytic modeling for credit risk, probability of loan default, modeling economic scenarios and risk management.

Telecommunication providers are leveraging near real-time incoming call data to identify the best cost for the routing of "roaming traffic." In addition, the most recent 90 days of call usage data is often analyzed to ensure service-quality commitments are satisfied. This frequently accessed hot data coexists in the data warehouse with cooler data, such as 24 months of customer call detail records which can help to resolve lawsuits or arbitration over intercarrier claims.

Retailers often store hot daily and weekly sales data in the data warehouse for comparative sales analysis of day versus week, versus month, versus year. Multi-Temperature data warehousing makes it possible for retailers to have access to a wide range of historical data and even allows priority queries to be answered with subsecond response time, if necessary. Retailers also store and access cooler or historical data used for market basket analysis, promotional analysis or product movement.

Multi-Temperature data warehousing can be implemented by Teradata Professional Services consultants with experience in balancing the data warehouse resources with the business demands for both strategic and operational users. With more than 2,400 Professional Services consultants, Teradata has performed thousands of consulting engagements for business and government organizations, many of whom have been recognized throughout the industry for deploying world-class data warehouses.

About Teradata Division

Teradata (www.teradata.com), a division of NCR Corporation (NYSE:NCR), is the global technology leader in enterprise data warehousing, analytic applications and data warehousing services. Organizations around the world rely on the power of Teradata's award-winning solutions to get a single, integrated view of their business to enhance decision-making, customer relationships and profitability. As a growing business, Teradata is always looking for outstanding talent. To learn more about Teradata career opportunities, visit www.teradata.com/careers.

About NCR Corporation

NCR Corporation (NYSE:NCR) is a leading global technology company helping businesses build stronger relationships with their customers. NCR's Teradata(R) data warehouses, ATMs, retail systems, self-service solutions and IT services provide Relationship Technology(TM) that maximizes the value of customer interactions and helps organizations create a stronger competitive position. Based in Dayton, Ohio, NCR (www.ncr.com) employs approximately 28,900 people worldwide.

NCR and Teradata are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCR Corporation in the United States and other countries.

    CONTACT: NCR Corporation
             Teradata Division
             Dan Conway, 858-485-3029
             dan.conway@teradata-ncr.com

    SOURCE: NCR Corporation