Teradata and SAS Launch Partnership, No Worries About SAP and Biz Objects

SAS and Teradata execs took time out from announcing their partnership today to say they expected to continue working with both SAP and Business Objects.

"We have partnerships with everyone," said Bob Fair, EVP for global field operations at Teradata. "For us, when one company acquires another company with a revenue stream and a customer base, they work hard to keep thier other partnerships open. We have partnerships with both SAP and Business Objects and expect that to continue." SAS focuses on enterprise intelligence -- business intelligence is just one component of that , he added.

"There are very few business intelligence vendors left, becasue they provide just a component of what people want. Customers are looking for industry-focused solutions."

Both SAS and Teradata have strong vertical business practices in retail and in financial services, which is one reason they have joined forces in the first time Teradata has endorsed a specific hardware vendor. The two companies plan to move SAS analytics into Teradata so customers won';t have to extract data to run the SAS analytics.  One customer, Warner Home Video, reported that as a result of integrating SAS and Teradata technologies it reduced processing time from 36 hours to one hour and 15 minutes.

When Norwich Union planned to launch pay-as-you-drive insurance in the UK, it tested a number of databases and selected Teradata as the only one that could manage all the information, while Bank of Shanghai chose Teradata over HP Neoview for Teradata's price performance and expertise in financial markets. (HP sales folks at Sibos said that HP Neoview concisntely beats Teradata in both pure performance and price.)