Teradata Expands AI Ventures with Private Preview on AWS Cloud

Highlights:

• Teradata AI Unlimited on AWS seamlessly integrates the potent ClearScape Analytics tools with a cost-effective environment specifically crafted to optimize exploration and discovery, per the company’s statement.
• AI Unlimited is available on-demand through the AWS Marketplace, and the platform’s supporting data can be accessed from wherever it resides on the AWS cloud.

The big data analytics firm Teradata Corp. is ramping its venture into artificial intelligence application development with the Teradata AI Unlimited platform launch, now in private preview on Amazon Web Services Inc.’s cloud.

The newly introduced offering is a serverless AI and machine learning engine. It is designed for data scientists, engineers, and developers to explore AI applications using data at scale.

Teradata is renowned for its big-data software platform, VantageCloud Lake, which enterprises widely utilize for analyzing business information and extracting valuable insights. Leveraging its powerful analytics feature set known as ClearScape Analytics, the new AI platform from Teradata is reported to depend heavily on these capabilities.

Teradata AI Unlimited on AWS seamlessly integrates the potent ClearScape Analytics tools with a cost-effective environment specifically crafted to optimize exploration and discovery, per the company’s statement. Teradata AI Unlimited is a serverless platform providing both compute and in-engine analytics. It empowers companies with greater capabilities to discover AI use cases and offers seamless integration within the AWS AI ecosystem.

Teradata stated that the platform is purposefully designed as the foundational element for enterprises’ AI initiatives. The platform offers parallel processing features coupled with the capacity to construct and deploy AI models at scale, leveraging the cloud infrastructure provided by AWS.

Additionally, it supports a bring-your-own-model approach, enabling users to refine and operationalize any foundational AI model from AWS SageMaker or other platforms. Users can access data through open-file formats, including Parquet, CSV, and JSON, utilizing tools such as Jupyter Notebooks, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, and Microsoft Excel.

Furthermore, Teradata AI Unlimited is set to support access to any Open Table Format-compatible data lake, including Apache Iceberg and Delta Lake. This capability will facilitate a seamless transition for users from model prototyping to production environments within VantageCloud.

Teradata Chief Product Officer Hillary Ashton affirmed the company’s dedication to assisting its customers in unlocking new value through AI. “It is another step forward in supporting our customers’ AI initiatives, giving them the ability to cost-effectively and securely explore, experiment, and operationalize new AI use cases,” she said.

Doug Henschen of Constellation Research Inc. clarified that Teradata AI Unlimited allows data scientists and other SQL-proficient users to tap into Teradata’s backend and ClearScape analytics capabilities, thereby supporting machine learning and data analysis at scale. “ClearScape is expressed in SQL and SQL-like expressions, but you can also use Python in the offering’s notebook interface,” he said. “Teradata’s ambition is to see adoption beyond existing Teradata customers as an alternative to Spark and other engines, but to me, the strongest appeal would be to folks who already know ClearScape.”

AI Unlimited is available on-demand through the AWS Marketplace, and the platform’s supporting data can be accessed from wherever it resides on the AWS cloud. This approach eliminates the necessity for costly data movement processes and time-consuming infrastructure management.

Utilizing AWS’ cloud-based compute instances, computing resources can be scaled up or down flexibly, optimizing users’ costs. Furthermore, AI Unlimited’s consumption-based pricing model ensures that customers only pay for the time spent exploring and making discoveries, minimizing AI development costs.

This release marks a significant step in accelerating Teradata’s mission to establish itself as a key player in AI development, leveraging its strengths in data management. In an interview in October, Teradata Chief Executive Steven McMillan elucidated that the company’s objective is to “harmonize data” within organizations, fostering cross-platform data consistency, which is crucial for constructing accurate and reliable AI applications.