Teradata is a US big data software company.

The California-based company is best known for its relational database management system, which is sold as a data warehouse and marketed under the same name as the company. This flagship data warehouse product stores and manages data.

Besides its flagship product, the company also offers business analytics, hybrid cloud, hadoop/open source and data lake products.

How did a university and bank come together to form Teradata?

Teradata had its beginnings in research at the California Institute of Technology and from the discussions of Citibank’s advanced technology group. Explaining the beginnings of the company, Teradata says:

“Caltech showed “how;” the bank showed “why.” The ideas came together in the winter and spring of 1979. Founders worked “out of the box” to design a revolutionary database management system for parallel processing with multiple microprocessors, specifically for decision support. The microprocessors, like horses, were harnessed to pull a large load rather than relying on one horse to do all the work.”

The company was incorporated in 1979 and in 1984 released its specialised database computer.