PROPERLY balancing technology and traditional business methods whenever harnessing data and information is a major requirement for companies today.
That is the slogan being touted by Dayton, Ohio-headquartered Teradata Corp.
As far as deploying new technologies for harnessing Big Data are concerned, Teradata Director for Big Data Martin Willcox said companies, especially those just starting to deploy new technologies, must choose the right tools and machines for their operations.
“Failure to achieve the right balance in blending old business process with expensive new technology will result in an expensive old business process,” Willcox said in a news briefing in Makati City.
Although there is a huge potential for the application of data, Willcox said companies will find it difficult to handle the information because of the complexity of the structure. He added it will require a high degree of interoperability among the systems of the network.
In its 2014 annual report, Teradata said it expects “the need for analytic data solutions and marketing applications will continue to grow as organizations increasingly rely on data and analytics to compete and achieve a differentiated advantage.”
“This need is further driven by the convergence of key market dynamics we have observed,” the company said.
Teradata cited one of these market dynamics include “increasing obstacles in building and managing effective analytic environments, because architectures are more complex and evolving, caused by the growth and volume of new types of data, proliferation of analytic tools and techniques, multiple data management systems varying service level requirements and varying value for data analytics use cases.”
For Teradata, a major step in managing the inflow of Big Data is to implement a unified data architecture.
This converts data—big and small, and all combinations—into useful, actionable insights, according to Willcox.
In documents Willcox provided, Teradata said several foreign retailers used unified data architecture “to help their marketing and category managers better understand consumer behavior on their web sites, on mobile devices and in the stores.”
Willcox said companies can learn a lot of lessons from those who pioneered in deploying the system.
He said companies must first approach the system as a business and not a technology problem.
“Those big buckets of data would be useless if you don’t know how to utilize them.”
Willcox pointed out that the introduction of big analytics is to extend and enhance existing analyses and business processes. “In short, the new will complement the old,” he said.
He said data integration is important to “glue all them together and deliver the capabilities to the system.”
“It is really an economic challenge capturing, storing, managing and exploiting Big Data. You might have a needle in the haystack,” Willcox added.
Teradata said its gross margin in 2014 was 54.1 percent, down from 54.7 percent in 2013. Operating income was $503 million in 2014, down from $532 million in 2013. Net income of $367 million in 2014 decreased from $377 million in 2013.
The company said approximately 59 percent of its total revenues of $2.732 billion was derived in the Americas region (North America and Latin America) and 41 percent in the International region (Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and Japan).
Last month, the company entered into two revolving credit agreements with several banks.
Rizal Raoul Reyes and Dennis Estopace