4
Teradata
| Power Score: 55.0 | Momentum Score: 38.82 (7) | HQ: San Diego, CA | CEO: Steve McMillan |
Economics
Valuation: $5.4 billion (+141% YoY)
Amt. Raised: $2.65 million
Politics
Lobbying Spend: No
Industry Orgs: ITI
People
Headcount:
10,769 (-3% YoY)
Engineering Headcount: 2,455 (-4% YoY)
Big Tech Experience: 1%
Open Roles: 430
Innovation
R&D Spending: $334 million (+2% YoY)
Patents Applied For: 158
Patents Owned: 504
Acquisitions:
No
On Power
Teradata is a
legacy data warehouse provider
, setting it apart from the cloud-native hyperscalers on this list such as Snowflake and Databricks. As a result, Teradata's platform has greater appeal for companies that
manage their own servers
. That's slowly changing, but Teradata is still playing catch-up as it transitions to the cloud — the company
only began offering
its Teradata Database product on AWS in 2016, on Azure in 2017 and on Google Cloud in 2019.
Teradata's age comes with certain benefits: It has a strong customer base and experienced employees, with average tenure more than double that of any other company on the Power Index. Investors haven't written Teradata off as a legacy provider either; the company saw its market cap more than double over the past year, rising from $2.3 billion to $5.4 billion. With 10,769 employees, Teradata has a higher headcount than all the other companies on this list combined. Part of this headcount size can be attributed to Teradata's
aggressive acquisition strategy
, as well as its consulting arm that provides big data services across industry verticals.
On Disruption
Teradata spends a lot on R&D, but it also contends with significant technical debt since it has so many legacy systems in need of a cloud-era makeover. Total company and engineering headcount have shrunk year-over-year. Teradata also had the lowest percentage of Big Tech alumni in our analysis, a reflection of both its headcount size and relative lack of luster. Then there's the fact that Datometry, a small cloud-native startup, is attempting to steal customers away from Teradata with an advanced SQL engine that it claims can run 99% of Teradata workloads, per ZDNet.
Tea Leaves
Teradata has undergone significant upheavals in recent years and its new leadership will be tasked with providing stability. In 2018, for instance, the company officially moved its headquarters from Dayton, Ohio to San Diego, California. And the company has fallen under the leadership of three different CEOs since 2019, with the board finally appointing current CEO Steve McMillan to the post in May 2020.
They Said It
" What we want to do from a Teradata vantage perspective is really promote it as a platform. And a platform that can be used across all of the cloud environments, and into the on-prem environment if you have Teradata Vantage deployed." —CEO Steve McMillan in January 2021 at AWS re:Invent