Teradata Possible 2024 | Steve McMillan, Teradata

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Steve McMillan

Chief Executive Officer

Teradata

Three insights you may have missed from Teradata Possible 2024

Integrating AI-driven data analytics into enterprise systems presents both opportunities and challenges. As businesses embrace artificial intelligence to drive efficiency and innovation, they face a growing need to balance technological advancements with robust data strategies.For companies such as Teradata Corp., this focus on scalable AI and reliable data management is vital to maintaining a competitive edge. By leveraging strategic partnerships, Teradata enhances its AI capabilities while ensuring that its data infrastructure supports innovation and operational resilience

Teradata positions itself as sustainable hybrid AI platform

Teradata Corp. is embracing both legacy and innovation as the company looks to build on its long history of parallel architecture to become a trusted artificial intelligence platform.Recently, Teradata has leveraged its partnerships with cloud giants such as Google and Amazon Web Services to offer hybrid data analytics. According to its Chief Executive Officer, Steve McMillan (pictured), the company is prepared for the AI era.Teradata’s Steve McMillan (right) talks with theCUBE about building an AI-driven data platform.“Our Teradata approach in the past has been: bring all of your data into our ecosystem,” he said

play_circle_outline Teradata's focus on technology roots and platform evolution

play_circle_outline Teradata's evolution and focus on technology roots

play_circle_outline Addressing AI hype and bubble with trusted, ethical, and sustainable AI solutions

play_circle_outline Partnership with NVIDIA for more efficient AI inference engines

play_circle_outline Meeting customers where they are with distributed workload capability

play_circle_outline Supporting customers in AI deployment from POC to production with three horizons

play_circle_outline Teradata's pivot to develop trusted hybrid platform for AI at scale

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Steve McMillan, Teradata

Steve McMillan

Chief Executive Officer Teradata

Exploring Teradata's Strategic Transformation at Teradata Possible 2024

Steve McMillan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Teradata, discusses the company's remarkable evolution during Teradata Possible 2024 in Los Angeles. This event underscores Teradata's recent technological advancements and future strategies for growth.

In this informative video, McMillan shares their expertise and vision for Teradata's transition from a legacy technology firm to a leading entity in the cloud and AI sectors. Conducted by theCUBE Research team, the inte... Read more

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What is the philosophy behind focusing on technology roots and becoming a platform company at Teradata? add

What is the importance of focusing on technology roots and becoming a platform company for a software company like Teradata? add

What are the three characteristics that AI workloads need to operate well? add

What partnership are you announcing today? add

What are some examples of organizations that have benefited from optimizing their supply chain and migrating to the cloud? add

What are the three horizons of deploying advanced analytics and AI capabilities according to the speaker? add

What accomplishments has the company made in developing a hybrid platform for AI at scale in the past 40 years, particularly in the last four years? add

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Steve McMillan, Teradata

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Savannah Peterson

>> Good morning, AI community, and welcome to sunny Los Angeles, California. We are here for a full day of coverage at Teradata Possible, and I am personally very excited. My name is Savannah Peterson. Delighted to be joined by Rob Strechay. You're a pro here at this show, and I'm just getting my first taste.

Rob Strechay

>> I love this show because I've been around Teradata as an end user in the community for a while and seen it grow up and grow out as it has expanded and really actually focused. And I think that's really coming out of the keynotes was really one of the big keys that I took away and really over last year at Orlando to this year. So, really good stuff.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. I'm excited to learn with you today, Rob. And speaking of keynotes, the man himself, Steve. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

>> It's my pleasure to be here. Great.

Savannah Peterson

>> Squeezing us in your very busy schedule, standing room only in the keynote this morning. Very impressive. What's it like for you to see your whole community and team here this week?

>> Look, this event for us is probably one of the most important things we do every single year. It's great to see all of our customers, partners, our friends interact with us. We get to show off our most recent technology announcements. But I had the pleasure of just recapping the journey that Teradata has been on over the last four years since I joined, which was awesome to really set that into context. And then, how we see Teradata moving forward in the future.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah. Oh, sorry.

Savannah Peterson

>> Go for it.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, I think what was exciting is having been in Orlando last year and now in LA, a little closer to your home I guess you could say, but really what was the key was last year it was about cloud and how you're making things go faster on cloud. This year, again, you started to move down away from just the software aspect and the cloud aspect into the platform aspect. Give us that journey and how you've been focusing the company.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, I think when I joined four years ago, I wanted to say what the company would be as we move forward and also what we weren't going to be. And I think Teradata has always been a fantastic technology company. We were founded on some just awesome patents. For the audience that may not know, it was actually a collaboration between Caltech and Citibank that spun out the Teradata technology.

Savannah Peterson

>> In the '70s.

>> In the '70s. Yes.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, it's impressive.

>> I have the pleasure of running a company with a strong heritage. And I said we were going to really focus back onto our technology roots. At our core, we're a technology company. But I know that the secret source that we've developed and the patents that we've developed over time are all contained within our software. And every great software company is a platform company. And to your point, I think focus is really important. Being a platform company means that we don't need to be all things to all people. We can bring the best of other in the world and combine it with the Teradata software platform to get unique business outcomes that nobody else can deliver in our opinion.

Savannah Peterson

>> Well, I think that's clear. I'm excited for you to share some examples for us of that. We'll get into that in just a second, but I do want to talk about that transformation. I mean, founded in 1979, Teradata's older than I am. But when we think of legacy companies, we don't always think of them as being on the cutting edge of tech, and I say that with love. Y'all have evolved and morphed a lot, well, over the last few decades, but in particular since you joined. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing to address the AI hype and bubble that's going on right now?

>> Yeah, so I think it's super interesting. The word legacy is fantastic in nearly every single context apart from IT, right?

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes. Legacy systems give everyone an anxiety attack.

>> What we've done in inside Teradata is really build on that legacy of knowledge, capability, technology innovation that we started off with. And when you think about the new world from an AI perspective, so advanced analytics is the overall category, AI/ML is a subset, gen AI is a subset of AI category. All of the workloads that run inside a gen AI in an AI environment operate at tremendous scale. You just need to look at ChatGPT and think about how many parameters is ChatGPT processing now? Billions of parameters, I think. And the inference engine there goes around that means that you have to operate at tremendous scale. Now, Teradata was founded and our core technology is based on a massively parallel computing architecture. It enabled us to deliver enterprise-scale data warehouse capabilities way back, to your point, in the early '80s.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, which is impressive though.

>> Absolutely.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's why you're still here today.

>> And we've been able to take that technology and take that architecture and apply it to solving the problems that AI and gen AI generate inside organizations. When we think about AI workloads, we think about three characteristics that they need to operate well. One is you've got to be really trusted. That whole hallucination, badly training your model, not training it on the right data results in that lack of trust. And so, we have a focus inside Teradata to ensure that our platform enables our technologists and business users to start to trust the output that comes from that gen AI solution set. And then, the second thing is it's got to be ethical. How do you eliminate bias? And so, a lot of capability's been built over time around model ops. So, how do you actually evaluate a model and make sure that you're not introducing bias into that model?

Savannah Peterson

>> Do you think it's possible to actually completely eliminate bias?

>> Well, that's why I think when you are looking bias, you have to have a human-centric approach to AI, and I think some of the examples that we gave and our keynotes were pointed to the importance of having that human still involved in that AI and gen AI interaction. We see that in our customers today. A number of the banks that we interact with, as an example, they all use gen AI to augment call center specialists, but not to replace the call center specialist, because they want to keep that human still in the loop because many times folks want to talk to a real person.

Savannah Peterson

>> It goes back to that trust piece you mentioned earlier.

>> And Radhika this morning in our opening session pointed to some really bad mistakes that have been made in terms of some unfortunate customer interactions that can generate. So, that trusted ethical is super important. But then, the last thing is sustainable. I spoke on stage, we had a fantastic announcement with Microsoft earlier this year with our AI Unlimited engine running in Microsoft Fabric. I had a picture of Satya with the Teradata logo behind him. Now, it's interesting that Satya and Microsoft have just announced that they're looking to reinstate Three Mile Island and fire up one of the atomic generators again, so that they can power their data centers.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, wow.

>> So, the third thing that we think about is how can you run these models sustainably? Yep. So-

Savannah Peterson

>> It's critical right now.

>> So, if you think about the energy usage predictions for these huge inference engines, you start to get to the point of you've got to be able to run it efficiently and effectively. And you know the real magic of Teradata is are massively parallel architecture and the way that we orchestrate workloads enables us to run complex AI and gen AI workloads just as well on a CPU infrastructure as they can run on a GPU infrastructure, and that's a massive leap ahead for us.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's huge. And that creates an entirely new offering that is more sustainable and cost-effective for your customers. I think people are getting a little GPU blinded to a degree where we're not realizing that it's not always going to have to be this huge lift from that processing moment, but that it's actually going to be about inference that makes it real time.

>> Yeah. I think one of the great things that we are announcing today actually is our new partnership with NVIDIA. Clearly, I think accelerated compute provider, a GPU provider, but imagine the possibilities of combining our software and orchestration capabilities with a GPU infrastructure and the ability to run those inference engines even more effectively, even more efficiently. And so, we are super excited about that partnership, what that can bring, how that can deliver to our customers.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, I think that to me is why... And I think you had the New York Giants on stage with you. Again, big fan of the NFL myself, not to F1 that you mentioned earlier, but I think bringing those use cases back to customers is one of the big things that people look to. And I think one of the things that Giants talked about was the fact that you didn't force them to move all their data one way or the other in coordination with... I mean, you're working with all of the cloud vendors, with AWS, Microsoft and Google, but they were talking about how they were leveraging AWS. Has that really been one of the keys that's helped drive those use cases with customers like the F1 and the banks and things of that nature?

>> Yeah, I think if you just think how we progressed our cloud business over the last four years, we're taking it to over half a billion dollars, hundreds and hundreds of our customers in the cloud now.

Savannah Peterson

>> Well done.

>> So, I think if only we were valued as a startup, we would be getting some significant advances there.

Savannah Peterson

>> Especially in this AI era.

>> Yes. But I think the reason that we've been able to build that business is because we took a very different approach. Our Teradata approach in the past has been bring all of your data into our ecosystem, but we've recognized the fact that data is going to be in many places in the customer ecosystem, and we should move the query engine to the data rather than moving the data to the query engine, which is a very, very different approach. It's a patented capability that we have in the Teradata ecosystem that allows us to distribute that workload. And we talk about meeting our customers where they want to be met. So, F1 is a great example of that. If you imagine they don't have time at a race to upload video to the cloud process, that video in the cloud with telemetry data from the track real-time. They wanted a track-side appliance that can run at the track at the race to give real-time insights, real-time recommendations, ultimately look at how to make the car faster on track. And so, that's a great example of meeting the customer where they want to be met-

Savannah Peterson

>> At the edge in this case too.

>> At the edge.

Savannah Peterson

>> At the fastest edge, really.

>> Yeah, exactly.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, that's cool to think about.

>> And then, we have healthcare organizations, we love working with healthcare organizations around the world because you can really see the difference that it makes in people's lives. Yeah.

Savannah Peterson

>> Saves lives.

>> Yeah, absolutely. Saving lives in real-time. So, optimizing a supply chain. We're working with a number of healthcare providers, one of them is illustrated on the screen behind you talking about Premier and how they optimize their supply chain, how they run that in the cloud to really deliver some significant results and outputs. So, different examples around the world. We recently moved American Airlines, their entire on-premise Teradata environment to Azure. And once we migrated the entire Teradata environment, controlling many of their different capabilities inside American Airlines, they phoned up their end users and said, "Do you notice anything different about the system?" And they said, "It seems to be running quicker," which is just the migration story that you want to hear.

Savannah Peterson

>> Amazing.

Rob Strechay

>> I think one of the things, because I know time is tight with you, and I think one of the big things, and you kind of hit upon it in the keynote as well, is really people are struggling with the ROI of AI or the ROAI. Because you're talking to a lot of executives, when you're having those conversations, how do you help them really see into the future of how they're going to get from POC to production?

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, I think if you look at the most recent Gartner Hype Cycle, it says gen AI's fallen into that trough of disillusionment. But actually, I was talking to one of our banking customers in Australia where they said, "It is not in a trough of disillusionment inside my company." But I think what we're seeing is the battle of the language models has begun, but has not played out yet. I think the ability to use a large language model, a medium language model, and a small language model for different types of solutions inside our customers is really going to help transform how they think about it. And when I talk to customers, I think about how they're deploying their advanced analytics and AI capabilities in three horizons. The first horizon is effectiveness and efficiency, like a Copilot. Use a Microsoft Copilot, help me write a presentation or an email, whatever that may be. The second horizon is how do you embed AI in your product or service? And we heard from Russell from the New York Giants talking about he sees that as his next step. How does he use language models for inference, a small language model trained on specific data for an outcome? And then, the third horizon, which I think can be the most exciting, is how can you use AI to transform your industry? And we had Unilever on stage with his in London last year where Andy, their chief data officer, was talking about he sees a time where his merchandising team and the buyer team from an organization like Walmart is essentially two bots interacting with each other. And that made me really think about is almost like the transformation we had in the financial markets when they moved towards high-velocity trading.

Rob Strechay

>> Exactly.

>> So, it's the battle of the algo, but now it's going to be the battle of the bots. So, I think that should be pretty interesting.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah.

Savannah Peterson

>> I think that's going to be fascinating. What else can we expect from our future?

Savannah Peterson

>> Look, I am always the optimist.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes, I love that. I can feel that energy, so next year-

Savannah Peterson

>> Just as a small example, when we move customers from their on-prem systems into the cloud with us, it frees up resources in our customers to add more value.

Savannah Peterson

>> Absolutely.

>> And I think the AI wave, the gen AI wave is going to help unleash more and more creativity. You could almost call it the era of creativity that we're entering into now where you can essentially outsource your more menial tasks and you can focus on how do we be more creative? How do we think of more advanced problem solving. And I think ultimately that will be more fulfilling for everybody. Everybody talks about, "Well, is AI going to take away people's jobs?" But you look at all of the automation that went into the automotive industry with robotic manufacturing lines. In fact, we've got a great solution ensuring quality control for robotic manufacturing lines. But actually, what it did, it actually accelerated the automotive industry and accelerated the innovation in that industry. And if you look broader, it actually increased the employment ratios for automobiles worldwide. So, I think that's the kind of future that we're looking with as we embrace these technologies.

Savannah Peterson

>> I couldn't agree with you more. I think that AI is not going to take our jobs, it's going to make our jobs more purposeful, more fun, and give us higher quality time for strategy and creativity. All right. I have one last question for you because time actually really flew by in this segment. If you could tell the world one thing they might not know about Teradata because they're familiar with you as a legacy company, but maybe not you today, what would you want them to know?

Rob Strechay

>> Look, over the last 40 years, but especially in the last four years, we've been able to pivot the company to develop a trusted hybrid platform for AI at scale. And we are delivering those solutions right here, right now, today, leveraging the partnerships we've just announced with folks like NVIDIA, leveraging our partnerships with Dell for on-premise capabilities, utilizing all the things that we know about on-prem technologies, but then working with AWS, Azure, Google to deliver that capability in the cloud is super exciting.

Savannah Peterson

>> Okay. I actually have one more question for you because I want to be able to leverage this and we get to interview you next year at this event. What do you hope to be able to say when we're, wherever that might be, not sure if you've selected your city, that you can't say today?

Savannah Peterson

>> That's a really good question. I think what we're really looking for is that AI impact and the workload impact from an AI perspective. I talked about if we were a startup in the cloud world what we'd be valued at. But if we can really leverage the AI capabilities and our massively parallel architecture, our core technologies around workload management, pre-optimization to really deliver in that AI world, I think it's going to make a massive difference to the company.

Savannah Peterson

>> Well, we can't wait to talk about it with you next year. Maybe get some of those customers up here. Now, I want to go watch a race, maybe get some F1 going on. Steve, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.

Savannah Peterson

>> It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Savannah Peterson

>> Especially on your most popular day of the year. Rob, always a treat to sit up here with you-

Rob Strechay

>> .

Savannah Peterson

>> And thank all of you for tuning in, wherever you might be on this beautiful rock. We're in Los Angeles, California here for Teradata Possible. My name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.