The concept of Teradata grew from research at the
California Institute of Technology and from the discussions of
Citibank's advanced technology group in the 1970s. In 1979, the company was incorporated in
Brentwood, California, by Jack E. Shemer, Philip M. Neches, Walter E. Muir, Jerold R. Modes, William P. Worth, Carroll Reed and David Hartke. Teradata released its
DBC/1012 database machine in 1984, with Citibank as an early customer. In 1990, the company acquired Sharebase, originally named
Britton Lee, another early database machine vendor that, unlike Teradata's
IBM mainframe focus, primarily served
midrange systems. In September 1991,
AT&T Corporation acquired
NCR Corporation, which announced the acquisition of Teradata for about $250 million in December. Teradata built the first system over 1
terabyte for
Wal-Mart in 1992. NCR acquired Strategic Technologies & Systems in 1999 and appointed
Stephen Brobst as
chief technology officer of Teradata Solutions Group. In 2000, NCR acquired Ceres Integrated Solutions and its
customer relationship management software for $90 million, as well as Stirling Douglas Group and its demand chain management software. Teradata acquired
financial management software from DecisionPoint in 2005. In January 2007, NCR announced Teradata would become an independent public company, led by
Michael F. Koehler. The new company's shares started trading in October. Victor L. Lund became the chief executive on May 5, 2016. In October 2018, Teradata started promoting its cloud analytics software called Vantage (which evolved from the Teradata Database). On May 7, 2020, Teradata announced the appointment of Steve McMillan as president and chief executive officer, effective June 8, 2020. In December 2024, Teradata successfully appealed a California federal judge's decision in favor of SAP SE in a case involving allegations of trade secret misappropriation and antitrust violations. The lawsuit accused SAP of using Teradata's trade secrets to address technical issues in its software and of violating antitrust laws by bundling products and requiring customers to purchase them together. A federal appeals court reversed the earlier ruling, reviving Teradata's claims.
Acquisitions and divestitures Teradata has acquired several companies since becoming an independent public company in 2008. In March 2008, Teradata acquired professional services company Claraview, which previously had spun out software provider
Clarabridge. Teradata acquired
column-oriented DBMS vendor Kickfire in August 2010, followed by the marketing software company
Aprimo for about $550 million in December. In March 2011, the company acquired
Aster Data Systems for about $263 million. Teradata acquired Software-as-a-service digital marketing company
eCircle in May 2012, which was merged into the Aprimo business. In 2014, Teradata acquired the assets of Revelytix, a provider of information management products and for a reported $50 million. In September, Teradata acquired Hadoop service firm Think Big Analytics. Teradata acquired Appoxxee, a mobile marketing
software as a service provider, for about $20 million in January 2015, followed by the Netherlands-based digital marketing company FLXone in September. That same year Teradata acquired a small Business Intelligence firm, MiaPearl. In July 2016, the marketing applications division, using the Aprimo brand, was sold to private equity firm Marlin Equity Partners for about $90 million with Aprimo under CEO John Stammen moving its headquarters to Chicago. while absorbing Revenew Inc. that Marlin had also bought. Teradata acquired Big Data Partnership, a service company based in the UK, on July 21, 2016. In July 2017, Teradata acquired StackIQ, maker of the
Stacki cluster manager software. In 2023, Teradata acquired Stemma, a data catalog software provider. ==Technology and products==