InformationWeek

That's good news for NCR, which has all but staked its future on Teradata, a database with market share so small, it's usually buried deep in the "other" column. "The market is moving our way," president and CEO Lars Nyberg said in a recent interview during which he touted NCR's data-warehousing software and analytical customer-relationship management applications. "Every company sits on a wealth of data," Nyberg said. "The question is how to leverage this for [customer] relationship building."

As NCR moves away from its computer hardware roots, it has increased focus on three core product areas: automated teller systems, retail store automation and point-of-sale technology, and data warehousing. While data warehousing remains a relatively small portion of NCR's overall business, accounting for $195 million of the vendor's $1.26 billion first-quarter revenue, it's also the fastest-growing: Those first-quarter sales represented 73% growth from the previous year.

NCR's Teradata customers are among the bluest of blue-chip companies, including Bank of America, Delta Air Lines, and Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart runs a 100-terabyte data warehouse on Teradata, Nyberg says. Last month, NCR scored a coup when it added E-commerce heavyweights E-Trade, MatchLogic, and Travelocity to its customer roster. The latter two used Oracle databases for operational systems, but executives at the companies say the Oracle software ran out of gas as their data warehouses grew rapidly.

"Teradata is the capability leader in terms of large-scale database requirements," says Richard Winter, president of Winter Corp., a database research and consulting firm.

3M Co., another NCR customer, has a data warehouse with 5 terabytes of capacity used to store and analyze financial, customer, sales, and inventory data. "It's also a key component of our E-business strategy," says Al Messerli, IT enterprise information manager at 3M. The data warehouse provides product and E-commerce data to 3M's operational transaction-processing system, and it's accessible to 10,000 3M employees, including sales and customer-support personnel. That number will grow to 30,000 by the end of next year, Messerli says.

Moving forward, NCR is promoting the concept of designing data-warehouse systems for front-line workers such as sales representatives, call-center staff, and anyone else who deals directly with customers. While the use of data warehouses has traditionally been limited to a handful of analysts, NCR's "active data warehousing" concept is based on the premise that front-line employees can leverage a data warehouse for cross-selling and up-selling purposes.

Office Depot Inc. in Delray Beach, Fla., is buying into NCR's vision. The office-supply retailer already has a multiterabyte Teradata data warehouse loaded with sales transaction information that it uses for market analysis and demand forecasting. While only a limited number of employees can access the system today, Office Depot plans to extend access to front-line employees. These employees might even contribute to data-warehouse information by recording the results of their customer interactions. "We need to capture interaction data as well as transaction data at all customer touch points," says David Guzman, senior VP of MIS systems development.