Teradata Data Lab is used for simulations.
End-End Technical Manager Teradata/Netezza/Greenplum DBA Group at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
You can schedule any testing you want to do in production.
Pros and Cons
- "In Data Lab, you can schedule any testing you want to do in production. You can take a small subset of data from production, copy it there, and run all your tests. It reduces your testing costs because it's all in the lab."
- "If I want to implement an upgrade, I'd like to see how it will be different. Ideally, Data Lab should help me test production items and also do future things. Future releases should be downloadable and testable in Data Lab."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
In Data Lab, you can schedule any testing you want to do in production. You can take a small subset of data from production, copy it there, and run all your tests. It reduces your testing costs because it's all in the lab.
What needs improvement?
If I want to implement an upgrade, I'd like to see how it will be different. Ideally, Data Lab should help me test production items and also do future things. Future releases should be downloadable and testable in Data Lab.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Data Lab is very stable. It has been in the market for 25 years.
Buyer's Guide
Teradata
May 2025

Learn what your peers think about Teradata. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Data Lab is highly scalable. My organization has a lot of users, but each company has more than 30,000 users. More than a thousand customers are using it, so there are more than 300,000 users out there.
How are customer service and support?
Teradata technical support is excellent.
How was the initial setup?
You don't have to do any installation. It is an out-of-the-box solution. It's low maintenance. We have one person, but if you need 24/7 coverage, you need four or five people.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We have a subscription. Nowadays, everything is cloud-based, so you pay for the subscription, and it is pretty affordable. There aren't any additional costs. So what you see is what you get.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Teradata Data Lab nine out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Operations Lead at a retailer with 201-500 employees
Good availability, good performance, and offers good value
Pros and Cons
- "The solution scales well on the cloud."
- "Teradata is a bit late for the cloud."
What is our primary use case?
We used the solution for our data warehouse.
What is most valuable?
The availability is very good.
We have found performance to be one of the most valuable aspects.
The solution scales well on the cloud.
What needs improvement?
Teradata is a bit late for the cloud. They maybe need to have some room for cloud improvements.
Scalability is limited on-premises.
The solution could use more AI support.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for a while. The last time I used it was two months ago.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The performance is great. It's stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.
Teradata is a 100% stable environment.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In on-premise systems, it was a bit tricky to scale. However, in the cloud, it's very easy.
People are not directly connecting to Teradata. However, they are using reports that are fed from Teradata. In that sense, the entire company is using Teradata. It's more than 1,000 people.
How are customer service and support?
I'm not directly connected with technical support from Teradata. I connect the local support here, and they are connected to Teradata, and on the weekends or after working hours, we get support and solutions. So we were happy with Teradata's and local company's support.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
This product was already set up when I joined the organization. As far as I know, they were trying to replace SAP BW. There was an SAP BW system, and they were trying to replace it with Teradata.
How was the initial setup?
It was easy for me to set up since I didn't handle the setup. Our local support company managed everything and prepared the environment, and handed it over to us. It was very easy in that sense.
What about the implementation team?
We had a local support organization assist us in the setup.
What was our ROI?
We have seen an ROI. It's worth the money.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Teradata is not a very cheap solution, yet it is a good solution. You get a good return on what you have paid for.
What other advice do I have?
I'm an end-user.
If new users are experienced database users, they will know the administration side is different than the other databases. However, it's almost the same for an end user, a developer, or somebody doing reports on Teradata on another database. It has some differences, yet the logic is the same.
I'd recommend the solution to others. I love Teradata.
I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.
I was happy to use it. I was glad to have Teradata, since, with Teradata, we can meet the requests of the customers, and it is highly available.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
Teradata
May 2025

Learn what your peers think about Teradata. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Easy to set up and reliable with good performance capabilities
Pros and Cons
- "I've never had any issues with scalability."
- "Apart from Control-M, it would be nice if it could integrate with other tools."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for the EDW.
What is most valuable?
The performance is the key item we appreciate. We're able to easily trigger jobs and we have access to integrations for running jobs. It's easy to use for the most part, which is why I really like it.
It's stable and reliable.
I've never had any issues with scalability.
The initial setup is pretty simple to set up.
What needs improvement?
Apart from Control-M, it would be nice if it could integrate with other tools. Specifically, with respect to the integrations with the automation tools, if that can be increased, and if the tester could be able to test more automation scripts in a better way it would help. The efficiency could always be increased.
Occasionally, at the outset of the implementation process, we struggled a little bit.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've only used the solution for a few months. It hasn't been a year yet. It hasn't been that long.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability has been good so far. It's reliable and the performance is good. there are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution seems to be scalable. I've never run into any issues with sizing. It's good.
I cannot recall the exact number of users that are on this solution currently.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is quite good. We used them once or twice and, as I recall, their response was always very quick. We are quite satisfied with the level of service they offer.
How was the initial setup?
For the most part, the initial setup is good. We found it pretty straightforward. That said, sometimes, in the beginning, we struggle.
For us, the deployment took around two hours. It didn't take too long.
We had about ten members on the technical team that handled deployment and maintenance.
What about the implementation team?
We are able to handle the initial setup ourselves. As long there are not some prerequisites or system issues, then it's possible for us to handle everything.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I don't have any direct details about the licensing or pricing of the solution.
What other advice do I have?
I'm not sure of which version of the solution we're using. It might be a previous version.
I'd recommend the solution to other users and organizations.
I would rate the solution nine out of ten. We are quite pleased with its general capabilities.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Principal at Insight Data Consulting
Excellent native features, highly stable, and impressive automation
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features of Teradata are that it is a massively parallel platform and I can receive a lot of data and get the queries out correctly, especially if it's been appropriately designed. The native features make it very suitable for multiple large data tasks in a structured data environment. Additionally, the automation is very good."
- "I've been using the same UI for 20 years in Teradata. It could use some updating. Adding more stability around Teradata Studio would be outstanding. Teradata Studio is a Java-based version of their tool. It's much better now, but it still has some room for improvement."
What is our primary use case?
Teradata is used for many use cases, such as clickstream, website support, and manufacturing control.
How has it helped my organization?
Teradata has helped our organization accelerate substantially the decision-making that happens.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of Teradata are that it is a massively parallel platform and I can receive a lot of data and get the queries out correctly, especially if it's been appropriately designed. The native features make it very suitable for multiple large data tasks in a structured data environment. Additionally, the automation is very good.
What needs improvement?
I've been using the same UI for 20 years in Teradata. It could use some updating. Adding more stability around Teradata Studio would be outstanding. Teradata Studio is a Java-based version of their tool. It's much better now, but it still has some room for improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Teradata for approximately 20 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of Teradata is outstanding.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Teradata is highly scalable, it is excellent.
We have approximately hundreds of users using this solution.
How are customer service and support?
I have not used support recently, but I have previously.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used SQL Server.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of Teradata is complex. The business layers on top of Teradata add to the complexity. The way the business uses Teradata adds to the complexity that the software itself doesn't necessarily have.
You can do an upgrade for Teradata in a couple of days. Deploying it is not difficult at all, nor is it time-consuming.
I rate the ease of setup for Teradata a one out of five.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price of Teradata is expensive. However, what they deliver they are outstanding. If you're looking for an inexpensive solution to run a database, this isn't your tool. It's the Ferrari of databases for data warehousing.
There are add-ons that you can purchase, such as special features. Teradata likes to sell an industry logical data model that's customized for just about every industry they have clients in. That is an extremely expensive add-on, but it does give you a step up in getting your logical modeling created. They've also done some work towards being able to go from logical to physical in an automated fashion with that ILM.
What other advice do I have?
Teradata is being used on-premise, but we're moving to the cloud and I don't know that we'll retain Teradata further. We might be switching to the Google platform and their native databases.
Make sure that your data volumes are large enough for it and that you follow their standards. The modeling for Teradata is slightly different than anything else out there. Match your primary indexes if you can. These PI-to-PI joins are incredibly fast, even with massive amounts of data. I've worked on Teradata installations in the petabyte range.
I rate Teradata a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Managing Director at DNA Payroll Outsourcing
Superior solution for optimizing data
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features are the large volume of data and the structuring of the data to optimize it and get very optimal data warehouse solutions for customers."
- "Teradata needs to pay attention to the cloud-based solution to make sure it runs smoothly."
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features are the large volume of data and the structuring of the data to optimize it and get very optimal data warehouse solutions for customers.
What needs improvement?
An area that needs improvement is the cloud-based version of the solution because it's designed for on-prem and then transferred to the cloud version. Teradata needs to pay attention to the cloud-based solution to make sure it runs smoothly. In the next release, I would like Teradata to be cloud-agnostic in order to not limit customers' choices.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for fifteen to twenty years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Teradata is superior, stable, and has no problems.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Teradata is easily scalable.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is complex and requires specialized people for implementation.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The cost of running Teradata is quite high, but you get a good return on investment.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I've also evaluated Snowflake, which allows you to expose your data to multiple sources for monitoring without additional work.
What other advice do I have?
For the on-prem solution, there isn't really anyone who can compete with Teradata. I would rate it as eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator
Big data administrator at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Fast response times, easy to use, and scalable
Pros and Cons
- "Teradata has good performance, the response times are very fast. Overall the solution is easy to use. When we do the transformation, we have all of our staging and aggregation data available."
- "The solution is stable. However, there are times when we are using large amounts of data and we can see some latency issues."
What is our primary use case?
We use Teradata in our data warehouse and we extract data. We have a data department that uses many tools for data extractions.
What is most valuable?
Teradata has good performance, the response times are very fast. Overall the solution is easy to use. When we do the transformation, we have all of our staging and aggregation data available.
What needs improvement?
Teradata could improve by providing better training. For example, Oracle provides good overall training. It is not easy to find information on the internet.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Teradata for approximately eight years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable. However, there are times when we are using large amounts of data and we can see some latency issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Teradata is scalable. We have two large servers and if we need to add new servers it can be done. Additionally, adding hard drive space or more performance is not a problem.
We have approximately 15 users using this solution in my organization.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is good but they could improve because sometimes they can take two weeks to resolve issues.
How was the initial setup?
The implementation took approximately one month.
What about the implementation team?
We did the implementation of Teradata using their support.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution to others.
I rate Teradata a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Director of Product Management at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Scalable, reliable and easy to access data
Pros and Cons
- "The product is reliable."
- "It could be a bit more user-friendly."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for data warehousing.
Primarily what happens is, in Juniper, they have internal business analytics and intelligence, a business intelligence analytics dashboard, and a lot of databases that capture the customer feedback.
It actually captures all the internal defects that are tracked on products. There are different databases that accumulate all this data. Basically, you need to be able to source the data and do some filtering. We extract, transform, and load logic. We have to run certain business rules based on what the program or management team looks at. The teams want to filter out some of these problems that they have, and they want to analyze how well the company is responding to many of these customer issues, et cetera.
Our company is a large company with each particular team using its own database and its own database tables. It becomes extremely hard for the company to take the data from different data sources and be able to correlate everything and be able to analyze many of the processes that are happening within. There is a workflow discontinuity that has been observed due to the fact that the data is distributed. In order to understand exactly how a request comes in from the customer and what goes on behind the scenes in order to resolve the problem or to be able to provide the support to the customer, and how long does it take before the problem gets fixed and delivered, et cetera, we need to centralize everything and we use data warehousing for that.
There are other similar kinds of business rules filtering that happen on the dashboard as well. This enables people to be able to view the data that is needed and the metrics that are of interest to them and is especially useful when it comes to the executive team.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is the ability to be able to access the different data anywhere, and the Cloud Data Warehouse solution enables that.
To be able to extract, transform, and load logic, and also to be able to correlate the data in different databases and not just correlate it in one is great.
If I want to be able to perform certain database queries on a joint operation between database tables located on two different database sources, et cetera, I can do that.
The most important thing we get out of the product is the intelligence that we derive. How the company feels in terms of process efficiencies is positive. In order to understand how a workflow is actually executed within the company, we need the assistance of this product. That's where the maximum value comes from.
The ability to access the data from a website or from anywhere is very important. The people themselves can also be anywhere.
The licensing system enables the company to track how a switch is used by an end customer, an end-user, and what different features the customer is actually running. It tells us a lot about the product. You have a lot of quantitative data that can provide an understanding of people's behavioral patterns and people's usage patterns when it comes to understanding what features or what are those elements that customers are most interested in - that can be tracked.
The solution is stable. The product is reliable.
The scalability is good.
Technical support has been good. They are helpful.
What needs improvement?
In terms of improvements, I can only speak from the dashboard perspective.
The most important thing is that I don't know how far the dashboard integration goes. People, for example, were using the Cloud Data Warehousing product, however, they were actually building their own dashboards, et cetera. That's like double the amount of work. The company should have the ability to integrate with something like Tableau to make everything more standardized.
With the customer data, we were able to integrate very successfully with Tableau and we were able to use it well from an end-user perspective. We were using the Tableau interface for understanding what our customer buys, et cetera. For example, for the customer financial data aspect of it, the business data, we were able to use Tableau dashboards. It would be better to use back-end data warehousing and also have dashboard reporting and have everything integrated properly. It doesn't need to be Tableau. It can be some other dashboard. However, it needs to be standardized.
The usability could be a bit better. It could be a bit more user-friendly.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for five or six years or so. We've used it for a while.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution does seem to be a quite stable solution. We haven't had any major issues that I am aware of. Generally, stability has never been a problem with the product. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability seems to be pretty good. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is decent. We are satisfied with the level of support we receive.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Some time ago, we also implemented SAP internally within the organization. For some reason, there was a decision not to go with the SAP HANA. I don't know why that decision was taken. Likely, it had to do with the kind of data or the kind of use case that we had and the data sources that we had. Teradata was considered to offer better performance and was a better-performing product.
What other advice do I have?
Teradata definitely does what it says, in terms of an on-demand platform, as it's a cloud service and it is definitely scalable. It's secure and it does provide scope for a lot of automation. The provisioning part of it, the administration and backup recovery as well as the analytics are some things that could be integrated in a more advanced manner. Maybe certain enterprise use cases need to be included so that users in an enterprise environment can build an analytics dashboard out of it. Support is good, however, the support requirements are not too much. Overall, the usability can be a little simpler. In general, we've been satisfied with it as a product.
I would rate the product at an eight out of ten. I want to be a little bit conservative in my rating as I want to be sensitive to the fact that people really want to be able to do the slicing and dicing of data at a user interface level and to be able to see all the insights at once. At that level of usability, to be able to slice and dice, you need to give a dashboard to a user.
If, for example, I have a certain type of organization that has a hierarchical organizational setup, I should be able to slice it to a specific group or a specific department, or a specific team. I should be able to see the metrics corresponding to that, or corresponding to the drilled-down data. While that's possible today, what I'm trying to say is that to be able to do it as a business user, to be able to use an interface in order to be able to do that kind of custom slice and dice operation and see the data in real-time, people are looking for more. Users want a level of usability from a business rules perspective, et cetera. That's something that people are looking forward to from intelligent and smart dashboards. It just needs to offer something that is much closer to capturing real-time information.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Solution Sales and Lead Information at TechAccess Asia Distribution
Good performance, flexible, easy to tune queries, and scales well
Pros and Cons
- "The flexibility in design is very good."
- "Teradata should focus on functionality for building predictive models because, in that regard, it can definitely improve."
What is our primary use case?
My current use case is an analytical system for an oil and gas company. They have a data lake and they are getting their data from different IoTs and different SAP systems. They wanted to have some feedback about their system and check on their production.
The IoT center's data was actually our use case, then how we can use that data to prevent disaster from happening. Previously, this work was all done manually. If there is a leak in the pipes then it is a large area to search because there are hundreds of kilometers that have been run.
To tackle this problem, they use IoT sensor data. It helps them to understand how the flow is working at a specific point in time, what happens when they're drilling the oil and other types of data. To complete the analysis, we use an analytical system or a Teradata Azure system that we designed.
The ECL was designed in a manner where we were doing the transformation on Hadoop. It is more like a balanced system where you use Hadoop for what it is good for, and where you use Teradata for its purpose.
I have worked in several different environments. The largest Teradata implementation on Azure was done by me. Right now, I'm working with AWS but previously, I have implemented both on-premises and hybrid deployments.
What is most valuable?
Performance-wise, Teradata beats everything.
The flexibility in design is very good.
When you want to tune it, it is very easy to do. I have worked a lot as a DB and I know that when there is a query that is stuck for hours, and you want to tune it, the task is quite easy. You can use the indexes and architecture, and exploit the power of Teradata.
What needs improvement?
There are lots of improvements that Teradata is working on and many that have already been done. However, recently I was in a session with people who are working on the data sciences side of the business. The data science group is not using the Teradata modeling features. Rather, they are using third-party tools for the prediction and forecasting models that they are building. Teradata should focus on functionality for building predictive models because, in that regard, it can definitely improve.
In my experience with Teradata, I have seen their sales strategy and that needs to change. As an organization marketing a product, they need to be cloud-focused instead of the on-premises thinking that they currently have.
There are a few things where you are totally dependent on the customer service and support from Teradata. This is an area where they really need to improve a bit, especially when you're talking about cloud service integration. Depending on the environment you may need to contact the AWS team, or the Azure team, or the GCP team, or the Teradata team. In all of these environments, improvements need to be made.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Teradata for more than a decade, probably close to 11 years. I have been in the industry for approximately 18 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We are satisfied with the stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is quite easy to scale. For a cloud-based deployment, it's even simpler now.
Previously, it was easy if we just wanted to add power but there was an impediment when you had to add a node. Similarly, it was difficult when you had to shift to the newer nodes. Now, however, with the cloud, it's easy to do.
How was the initial setup?
For the on-premises deployment, a lot of people consider the initial setup to be difficult. Keep in mind, however, that Teradata is a million-dollar product, so they set it up for you.
For a cloud-based deployment, it is now pretty simple to deploy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price of Teradata is on the higher side, and I think that it where they lose out on some of their business. The price should be reduced to make it more competitive.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
One of my clients recently tried to switch solutions but they have rolled back to Teradata. The same thing happened with another company that I know of in Pakistan, where they tried working with an IBM product.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is that they really need to hire the right people. Get people who actually have worked on Teradata to guide them.
You can buy Teradata and you can get it up and running, but until you hire a few good people, you are not going to get the full benefits from it. These people are not resources that you would ask Teradata to provide you. Rather, you can hire them from the market.
The important part is that you need to have people who have good experience with Teradata because they can truly exploit its power for you.
Overall, this is a good product. It is close to the best but I cannot rate it perfectly because of the price.
I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

Buyer's Guide
Download our free Teradata Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Updated: May 2025
Product Categories
Data Warehouse Customer Experience Management Backup and Recovery Data Integration Relational Databases Tools BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Marketing Management Cloud Data WarehousePopular Comparisons
Microsoft Power BI
Databricks
Tableau
Azure Data Factory
Commvault Cloud
Informatica PowerCenter
SQL Server
SSIS
MySQL
Snowflake
IBM Cognos
Oracle Database
SAP HANA
MariaDB
Oracle Data Integrator (ODI)
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Teradata Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Quick Links
Learn More: Questions:
- Which data catalog can provide support for BI data sources such as SAP BO and Tableau?
- Infobright vs. Exadata vs. Teradata vs. SQL Server Data Warehouse- which is most compatible with front end tools?
- Comparing Teradata and Oracle Database, which product do you think is better and why?
- Which companies use Teradata and who is it most suitable for?
- Is Teradata a difficult solution to work with?
- What are the main differences between Oracle Exadata and Teradata?
- Which product do you prefer: Teradata Vantage or Azure Data Factory?
- Which solution has better performance: Taradata QueryGrid or Denodo?
- Oracle Exadata vs. HPE Vertica vs. EMC GreenPlum vs. IBM Netezza
- When evaluating Data Warehouse solutions, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?