Case Study

06.13

Why Smart Companies

Are Migrating from
Oracle to Teradata
Simple, straightforward move results
in reduced costs and increased speed

eb 3154

Why Smart Companies Are Migrating

from Oracle to Teradata

Today, most organizations understand the value of data

warehousing. Many have tried to implement a data
warehouse based on their existing database management
systems (DBMS). And for static reporting and limited
querying, these efforts can be adequate. But because
many of these data warehouses are built on platforms
designed initially for online transaction processing
(OLTP)say, an order entry systemand not for making
critical business decisions, they cant handle the demands
of a higher-volume and more dynamic environment.
Stretched beyond their intended uses, these OLTP-based
systems eventually lock companies out of the real value
that data warehousing can provide.
Now more than ever, Oracle customers fall into this
category. Although they may be satisfied with Oracle as
their OLTP backbone, companies are realizing the platforms
limits. Most importantly, they are understanding that their
company may be suffering because of these limitations.
As a result, many Oracle customers are considering
migrating to Teradata Database. For these customers,
here are the important questions:
~~How does the migration take place?
~~Does the migration account for existing needs along
with future plans?
~~What value will they realize at the end of the process?
These questions are answered in the following profiles of
four of the more than 300 Oracle customers that have
already migrated from their Oracle data warehousing
environments to a Teradata solution. These companies
have achieved performance improvements and critical
business benefits that justify the migration costs. Their
stories go beyond theory and discuss the reality of a
successful migration.

The Problem with Oracle

Organizations that have implemented data warehouses
based on Oracle are finding that their needs are not
being met. For some, what they built for a specific set
of end users doesnt apply to all parts of the business.
Others experience serious performance degradation
as the systemor systemscant handle the growing
volumes of data, the larger numbers of users, and the
more complex queries and datasets. Many organizations
find that their existing data warehouses can scale only
along one dimensionfor example, data volume. But this
comes at the cost of other aspects, such as load times,
concurrent users, complex queries, and mixed workloads.
They have to limit the number of users or decrease data

Case Study
06.13

eb 3154

or query complexity to maintain performance. As a result,

important new business questions cant be answered
within a reasonable length of time because data requires
timely aggregation, indexing, and modeling. And as data
warehouse requirements continue to grow, these technical
limitations will limit business valuecausing higher
maintenance costs and lower return on investment (ROI).
Its no wonder, then, that decision makers are realizing
that a general-purpose DBMS designed initially for
OLTP doesnt meet real-world business requirements.
They need a DBMS that can scale along the multiple
data warehouse dimensions such as data volume and
complexity and query volume and complexityall at the
same time. Oracle simply cant meet the challenge.
But what about Oracle Exadata Database Machine?
In 2008, when Oracle announced its Exadata Database
Machine, an appliance that claimed to support and increase performance for both OLTP and analytical database
systems, some industry observers thought the number
of companies migrating from Oracle to Teradata would
ceaseor at the very least slow down. This has not been
the case. If anything, migrations have accelerated. Why?
Because fundamentally, Exadata is still Oracle, with all the
same problems and limitations Oracle has always had.
Although the new Exadata storage layer boosts the base
performance, at its core its still an OLTP DBMS solution.
Oracle Exadata Database Machine is simply the OLTP-rooted Oracle database with the Exadata storage bolted on
in an attempt to alleviate the databases core architectural
shortcomings, whereas Teradata Database was architected
from the ground up to do data warehousing.
A number of years ago, a terabyte was still considered a
lot of data; and the complexity of data warehouse queries
was minor compared to today. Now, its not uncommon
for a data warehouse to contain tens or even hundreds of
terabytes of data, and the complexity of the workloads
continues to rise. Increasingly, turning to Teradata is the
solution for organizations facing this dilemma.
Often, companies store summarized data in an Oracle
data warehouse, without letting users access the granular
data directly. The presentation layer provides access
through various data marts designed for subject-specific
applications or a particular set of end usersfor example,
business users in the finance department. Frequently,
these data marts are implemented to offload reporting
requirements from operational systems. The initial
implementation may be considered successful because
end users receive reports and information they havent
had access to before. Compared to what they were
accustomed to, a data mart is a step up.

Why Smart Companies Are Migrating

from Oracle to Teradata

But problems arise as soon as users begin to see whats

truly possible. They want to ask new, more in-depth
questions versus just being able to get information from
preset, canned reports. They want to unlock real business
value. Unfortunately, the original Oracle infrastructure
wasnt designed to handle these demanding users and
their ever changing complex ad-hoc queries on the same
system at the same time.

The Teradata Solution

Teradata solutions are designed to do just this. Providing
limitless scalability, flexibility, performance, and reliability,
Teradata Database consistently outperforms any generalpurpose DBMS in customer benchmarks. In fact, as
more and more companies experience the headaches of
supporting a failing DBMS platform, many are replacing
their Oracle decision-support infrastructure with one
based on a Teradata solution.
Fortunately, Teradata has a long and successful track
record of handling the migration from Oracle to Teradata.
The migrations are manageable, repeatable, highly
automated, and process driven. In fact, Teradata has a
comprehensive migration program specifically designed
to deliver significant value to those customers who
choose to make this important move.
This migration program provides a specific Teradata
Solution for the Oracle Professional training curriculum;
a set of formal migration processes and procedures
designed to ease, shorten, and optimize the migration
process; and access to consulting and field staff with
years of experience performing these migrations.

Three Steps to Migration

Three critical steps must occur in a data
warehouse migration:
1. Data that currently resides on Oracle must be moved to
Teradata Database. This is done either by transferring
the data from one platform to the other (called a
forklift upgrade) or by completely rebuilding the target
datasets from the source data. In practice, the data
migration is usually a mix of both these options.
2. The existing application and report set is migrated
to work with the Teradata solution; or a new set of
applications and reports is built to provide new and
greater functionality that meets or exceeds the end
users business requirements.

Case Study
06.13

eb 3154

3. The extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes are

updated to load the new data warehouse from the
old and possibly some new sources. The Teradata
migration program includes efficient procedures
and automated tools that streamline this migration
step. For example, if existing processes in the data
warehouse implementation use Oracles proprietary
procedural language PL/SQL, the Teradata migration
accelerator can automatically translate and optimize
Oracle PL/SQL, Oracle SQL, and SQL Plus code into
Teradata code.

Four Case Studies

Companies have multiple options for accomplishing these
migration steps, which have been tested, tuned, enhanced,
and documented over the years. It would be impossible to
discuss all of the details of each process, but the following
case studies highlight common approaches used in the
many Oracle-to-Teradata migrations.
A biotech company: Queries go from hours to minutes
With more than 27 data marts across multiple domains,
all built on Oracle, an international biotech firm had no
single repository where users could access shared data
across multiple functions, such as finance, sales, and
manufacturing. Instead, the firm had to go through a
complex and arduous process to get data to the systems
that needed it. The result? The company was having trouble
effectively pursuing its mergers and acquisitions (M&A)
strategy, which fueled its growth. It needed one place
where it could consolidate both divisional and enterprise
informationin its SAP systems and other vendors
systemsfor financial, sales, and manufacturing data.

Why Smart Companies Are Migrating

from Oracle to Teradata

To make matters worse, the Oracle Database 10g and 11g

data marts exhibited numerous problems. The data was
neither timely nor accurate. The firm had problems with
information lineage as well as with deploying master data
management processes. Users could not easily perform
what-if analytics, and the systems were plagued by
enormous performance problems. For example, a complex
recasting of hierarchies into alternate dimensions on
Oracle would run for seven days and not finish.
The 27 data marts covered a broad range of functions
including sales and marketing, human resources, product
inventory, indirect sales calculations, pharmaceutical
data, and sales force performance. They ran on multiple
hardware platforms, including Sun, HP, and Dell. For ETL,
the company used Informatica. It also had deployed
some of Oracles proprietary PL/SQL language for ETL
processes. For analytics, the firm used Siebel Analytics,
with dashboards and custom apps that were facing
performance problems within the Oracle environment.
Users were constantly complaining about performance
and their inability to get queries answered in a timely
manner or at all. On the IT side of the house, daily data
load jobs were continually missing their service-level
agreements (SLAs), delaying reports, and making IT
scramble to put out fires.
Teradata consultants spearheaded the migration process,
which took place in multiple phases. The first large
data mart migrated was Siebel Analytics, which was
a combination forklift and redesign project. The initial
migration took six months. The firm doubled the scope
of its analytics, added additional attributes, and doubled
the amount of data. Gradually, other marts were brought
in using a multiphased approach. Ultimately, the firm
collapsed 16 divisional domains and 27 data marts into
Teradata Database, creating a centralized repository.
The biotech company was impressed with the results. The
previous recasting process, which didnt finish even after
seven days, now takes just 16 hours to complete. Premigration dashboard queries were previously returned
in five to 12 minutesand as much as 40 minutes on the
high end. Now dashboard runtime is just 35 seconds to
one minute on the Teradata platform. All domain data is
now sharable, accurate, and timely, with correct lineage;
and SAP data is now offloaded onto Teradata Database
for analytics.
For human resources personnel, the new Teradata
solution is a major win. The entire amount of HR data is
available on Teradata Database, and all 13,000 managers
can access it. After the contract-pricing data mart
was consolidated onto the Teradata platform, the firm

Case Study
06.13

eb 3154

Thanks to Teradata, a
manufacturer of high-tech
products experienced a 300
percent improvement in query
performance.
estimated conservatively that it decreased revenue losses
by 0.5 percent just on that one mart, which equals a
$600,000 increase in revenue.
A high-tech manufacturer: Immediate and real benefits
A manufacturer of high-tech products for both consumer
and business markets was utilizing Oracle9i Database and
Oracle Database 10g and 11g in 28 data marts to store
all company data, including information on sales and
marketing, manufacturing, HR, and product design. Not
surprisingly, the company couldnt get a complete view of
its business. Moreover, reporting performance was slow
and hindered the ability of users to make timely decisions.
To top it all off, maintaining this fragmented infrastructure
was simply too expensive.
In addition, the firm was having other technical problems
with its Oracle environment. It was missing SLAs for
morning reports and had to build numerous timeconsuming aggregates on a daily basis. Also, because
of the fragmented environment, there was inconsistency
in the data pulled from various data marts. The firm
wanted to build a centralized enterprise data warehouse
infrastructure but worried that the Oracle platform
couldnt scale to meet its needs.
Together, all the data marts held 21 terabytes of data,
with Informatica ETL as well as custom PL/SQL ETL, and
encompassed everything from repair-center tracking,
customer service, orders and bookings, sales and billing,
customer analytics, and marketing campaigns. There were
thousands of daily data load jobs, with more than 1,500
tables. SAP BusinessObjects and SAS software were used
for reporting from 22 source systems with 500 interfaces.
The firm evaluated Oracle and Teradata Database side
by side in a three-month proof of concept (POC) and
determined that Teradata Database was the best choice
due to overall function, performance, and total cost of
ownership (TCO) advantages.

Why Smart Companies Are Migrating

from Oracle to Teradata

Teradata consultants undertook the initial forklift migration

and completed moving the data into the new, integrated
enterprise data warehouse model in 120 days. The benefits
were immediate and real. The Teradata platform eliminated
the need for aggregate builds and enabled the firm to load
data in near real time. The system now supports more than
10,000 users and processes more than 1 million queries
per hour, with a 300 percent improvement in query
performance. The 21 terabytes of data have increased to a
petabyte, which is stored in a single, centralized enterprise
data warehouse, and users from every department in the
company can access it.

A sporting goods retailer

wanted to implement a new justin-time supply-chain strategy
but felt that Oracle wasnt
capable of scaling.
A sporting goods retailer: The winning goal
A sporting goods retailer, which operates almost 500
stores in 45 U.S. states, was having serious problems with
its Oracle Database 10g Release 2 RAC environment. Even
though the data warehouse only contained 1.4 terabytes
of data and 350 tables, Oracle couldnt adequately
perform or scale to meet the dynamic reporting needs
based on the MicroStrategy platform without having to
jump through tuning hoops.
Users complained that queries were taking forever to run,
and the system missed business SLAs for reporting. The
firm wanted to implement a new just-in-time supply-chain
strategy and position itself for future growth but felt that
Oracle wasnt capable of scaling or providing it with the
required performance.
What was needed was a centralized enterprise data
warehouse. The retailer evaluated Teradata Database,
Netezza, Oracle RAC, and Oracle Exadata. The system
had to offer at least twice the existing capacity. It needed
to be easy to use and manage. Performance was also
very important. The system needed to verify database
appliance failoverfor failed components and shutdowns,
for example. And the DBMS had to comply with the firms
systems standards, such as management and monitoring,
backup and restore, security, and compliance. After the
in-depth evaluation, Teradata Database came out the
clear winner.
5

Case Study
06.13

eb 3154

The firm undertook a forklift migration to a three-node

Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance platform running
Teradata Database. Teradata consultants migrated the
data from the Oracle DBMS and the MicroStrategy
reporting environment. To mitigate risk, it developed the
new infrastructure in parallel with the existing system.
The firm itself migrated the ETL environment. The entire
move took just 60 days. During the migration, the firms
overall data size was reduced from 1.4 terabytes to 700
gigabytes by eliminating aggregates and indexes that
were not necessary in the Teradata environment.
Today, queries that never finished in Oracle take just
minutes in Teradata Database. The data warehouse now
supports a dynamic analytical environment with tactical
and strategic queries as well as data load, all going on at
the same time. The Teradata solution also simplifies and
streamlines overall management of the data warehouse
environment and now meets all reporting SLAs. The firm
was able to execute its supply-chain initiative as well as
other growth-producing projects. Thanks to simplifying
the ETL processes, it no longer needs to patch small
amounts of data by partition-swapping into table space
as was necessary in the Oracle environment. Finally, it
also eliminated numerous Oracle maintenance database
administrator (DBA) functions that are not necessary in
Teradata Database; DBAs are now adding higher value by
working with the business to bring new applications and
functionality online.
An international hospitality conglomerate: Handling
complexity with ease
Managing more than half a million guest rooms in more
than 100 countries, this international hospitality firm
owns, franchises, and runs some of the best-known hotel
brands in the industry.
The company was having trouble with its Oracle
Database 10g data warehouse running in a large Solaris
environment. Data that users needed was not available in
the data warehouse because of missed SLAs surrounding
nightly loads. The environment had maxed out its number
of users, and its performance was plagued by slow
responses. The firm didnt believe the existing Oracle
environment could meet its future needs for a large
loyalty system project or for implementation plans for a
large integrated marketing management system.
The firm had 9.6 terabytes of data, with front-end
reporting by SAP BusinessObjects, with 700 users,
and SAS software with 100 users. Informatica was the
ETL solution.

Why Smart Companies Are Migrating

from Oracle to Teradata

Case Study
06.13

eb 3154

minutes. For example, running a query about member

retention and defection trends went from three and a half
hours to two minutes; running a query on the number of
member points earned and redeemed by month went
from seven and a half hours to five minutes. The Teradata
solution has allowed the firm to rewrite its loyalty program
system to serve its most loyal customers more effectively.

Unlock the Power of

Data Warehousing
One of the most challenging problems businesses face
is to tap in to their vast amounts of data to make quick
and effective decisions. They are struggling with whether
to improve their existing infrastructure or find a costeffective solution. The four companies profiled were
facing diminishing returns and were not satisfied with the
ROI provided by their existing Oracle data warehouse
systems. These companies made the decision to move to
a Teradata solution. When they did, they discovered the
following:

The company evaluated the latest and greatest from both

Oracle and Netezza but concluded that Teradata Database
was the best choice due to scalability; ability to handle
an ever increasing number of complex queries; and easy
integration with other tools. The company also liked the
consistent performance and data integrity.
With the help of Teradata consultants, the firm undertook
a forklift migration that was completed in 140 days,
running both new and previous systems in parallel for the
final 80 days to mitigate risk. A large amount of SAS code
and all Informatica ETL jobs and SAP BusinessObjects jobs
were migrated to the new Teradata data warehouse.
The firm immediately saw significant improvement in
query performance, reducing query times from hours to

~~Teradata has established procedures that simplify the

migration process.
~~The tasks involved in the migration process are simple,
straightforward, and designed to account for existing
needs along with future plans.
~~The positive results can be significant. The cost
of administering and maintaining the warehouse
environment is greatly reduced, and the capability
and performance of the new system is a dramatic
improvement.
Teradata would like to add your company to the growing
list of firms that have unlocked the power of data
warehousing. For more information about migrating from
Oracle to Teradata, visit www.Teradata.com or contact
your Teradata account representative.

10000 Innovation Drive Dayton, OH 45342

teradata.com

The Best Decision Possible is a trademark and Teradata and the Teradata logo are registered trademarks of Teradata Corporation and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and worldwide.
Teradata continually improves products as new technologies and components become available. Teradata, therefore, reserves the right to change specifications without prior notice.
All features, functions, and operations described herein may not be marketed in all parts of the world. Consult your Teradata representative or Teradata.com for more information.
SAP is the registered trademark of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries.
SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries.
Copyright 2013 by Teradata CorporationAll Rights Reserved.Produced in U.S.A.
EB-3154
> 0613