We'll do more for SMEs now we're invested in cloud, promise Teradata bosses Koehler and Wimmer

Company happy to work with any company that 'understands the value of data'

Teradata has vowed to start targeting the SME (small to medium enterprise) market rather than just gunning for large businesses as it begins to more fully embrace cloud products, CEO Mike Koehler and co-president Hermann Wimmer told Computing today.

Speaking to the two Teradata bosses at the firm's Partners 2015 conference in Anaheim, California, Computing flagged up our recent interview with Yodel CIO Adam Gerrard, highlighting the delivery firm's use of Teradata and the "massive positive" Gerrard says it represents.

From this, we asked Teradata what its ongoing attitude attitude towards the SME sector might be, as it launches new and various ways to embrace new business, including increasing numbers of cloud offerings.

"It's a great question, it's been asked of us for maybe 15 years and it's always been an opportunity," admitted Koehler.

"I think before, if you looked at us previously, from a Teradata perspective, it only made sense to focus on the biggest companies in the world and the largest GDPs.
And the amount of work and effort to go to them is similar to - I won't say small business - but the medium sized, or below the Fortune 3000 anyway."

Koehler said it "made more sense" for Teradata to focus on bigger companies when it was part of NCR (Teradata spun off from that company in 2007).

"There were some limitations on resources. But when we became an independent company, we started growing and going after the rest of the market," he said.

But Koehler feels it's cloud, which is something Teradata is still properly catching up with, that may fit best with the wider SME market.

"As we get to where we are today, and we've set up a mid-market team in the US, I think what you'll see is that cloud is a big opportunity for us," he told Computing.

Wimmer added that he "agrees 100 per cent" with Koehler's explaination.

"In the past, we put our resources into larger accounts. And value was there - obviously - for companies with complex environments and for those who really used the data - this is our DNA."

But in an age of big data and more intelligently utilised analytics for anything from shopping giants like Marks & Spencer down to independent satchel-making firms, Wimmer acknowledges that now almost anyone is prepared to "use data".

"With our cloud offering, we have now a good chance to go to the next level because it's easier to do business with us [that way]," he said.

"It [allows for] shorter sales cycles for starters, with smaller projects. So as long as it was a dedicated on-premise business, it cost so much more to sell to SMEs. But with cloud, we're in a totally new situation and it will change not [so much] our model, but our investment in this market.

Overall, said Wimmer, what Teradata customers have in common is a company culture that has an appreciation of data, and its potential.

"We're always good if the management understand the value of data, even if they don't belong to the Global 5000," he said.

"It's always good to invest in analytical infrastructure. Because it's not a spend, it's an investment - and in that way, it doesn't matter if the company is bigger or smaller."