|
Welcome to the Petabyte Club |
|
|
Datawarehousing company Teradata welcomed five members into an elite new club this week – one that it dubbed the “Petabyte Power Players.”
The members of this club each have data warehousing environments that exceed one petabyte, a capacity that not so long ago seemed far beyond the need of most organizations. Now, however, it is expected a steady stream of new members will be added to the Petabyte Power Players in coming years as companies strain to keep up with ever-increasing amounts of data.
The inaugural members of the Petabyte Power Players are auction house eBay, which now has some 5.0 petabytes of data in its datawarehouse, Wal-Mart which is said to have about 2.5 petabytes, Bank of America and another unnamed financial institution with 1.5 petabytes, and computer manufacturer Dell with just over 1.0 petabytes.
One petabyte, by the way, is 1,024 terabytes. That probably doesn’t mean that much to you – or me – so here’s another way of thinking about it. If every PC had a 50-gigabyte hard drive, storing a petabyte would take 20,000 PCs.
Teradata chief marketing officer Darryl McDonald said that the while the petabyte club may be an exclusive group at the moment, it won’t be so for long. He noted that another 30 or so companies are on the verge of being added to the group.
“Retailers are collecting consumer and inventory data to manage customer relationships and to optimize their supply chains,” said McDonald. “Manufacturers and transportation companies are also collecting more supply chain and logistics information to squeeze out inefficiencies. Financial institutions are obviously ramping up bigger risk management programs . . .
“And now, analyzing the vast amount of data in Web clicks and trading ticks for operational and competitive advantage is becoming practical.”
Of course, now that terabytes are becoming passé, it raises the question of whether Teradata might want to think of changing its name to Petadata. But then again, five or ten years from now it would only have to change its name again.
Next would come Exadata (1024 petabytes = 1 exabyte), then Zettadata (1024 exabytes = 1 zettabyte), and then Yottadata (1024 zettabytes = 1 yottabyte). I kind of like that last one, Yottadata Corp. – has a nice ring to it and the potential for a great tag line. “If you’ve got a lot of data, better talk to Yottadata.” Advertising, here I come.
Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register. |
