Top 5 Reasons Why People Are Migrating from Teradata to Snowflake

Over the past few years, we’ve noticed the growing demand for moving data services from on-prem to the cloud. This includes moving clients from Teradata to a new cloud data warehouse. So why are more and more Teradata clients migrating to the Snowflake Data Cloud? We’ll start off by exploring some key insights on Teradata and Snowflake before revealing the top five reasons clients are making the change in today’s ever-changing data landscape.

How is Teradata keeping up with the competition?

Teradata entered the cloud data warehouse game a little late, but they still hold a few advantages. One advantage is its large customer base, a list of customers consisting of some of the world’s largest companies like Apple, Verizon, T-Mobile, Southwest Airlines and more. To retain that large customer base, they have been working on new products to compete with solutions like Snowflake.

One of their most popular products is their analytics platform, Teradata Vantage. It combines open source and commercial analytic technologies together for increased value. In Teradata Vantage, data is configured on-prem, through a major cloud provider, or a hybrid version of the two. Vantage uses the same applications on all versions which makes it easy to migrate to the cloud or switch cloud providers. As a result, this alleviates the need to rewrite or redesign your applications.

In a sense, Teradata Vantage is a repackaged version of Teradata that takes advantage of key cloud features. While it may have taken Teradata some time to transition to the cloud, they are making great strides with innovation to provide a great cloud offering.

With that in mind, Teradata Vantage is a good choice to consider for many clients already using Teradata applications. However, due to advances in cloud technology, clients have a wider variety of options and providers, including Snowflake, to choose from when it comes to storing data on-prem vs. in the cloud.

What is Snowflake doing to revolutionize cloud technology?

Snowflake has quickly become a leading solution for cloud data storage. They stand out against on-prem warehouses and their competitors by utilizing the capabilities of the cloud to the fullest capacity.

One great example is the prioritization of analytics within the Snowflake platform. Over the past 20 years, the world of analytics has become increasingly fragmented, which has led to the demand for a structure where the traditional schema of data management and full SQL support can be utilized with the flexibility of the cloud.

When packaging their product, Snowflake prioritized these factors — they took the best components of on-prem appliances and combined that with the advantages of cloud technology such as elasticity, scalability and consumption-based pricing. As a result, Snowflake’s innovative features have enticed an increasing number of Teradata’s clients to embark on a journey to using cloud technology.

Snowflake uses intuitive, automative features like data compression, statistic collection, workload management, concurrency of queries and disaster recovery. Therefore, there is little to no oversight for users. By comparison, Teradata requires more maintenance and time.

Additionally, Snowflake has even created a solution to help clients quickly and easily migrate their data. This significantly helps their clients make decisions and return value faster by reducing their on-prem footprint (which also reduces oversight).

What’s driving customers to consider moving to Snowflake?

Teradata customers are driven to Snowflake due to concerns about rising data warehouse costs and the lack of agility in the cloud data warehouse. In comparison, storage in Snowflake costs about $1 a day per terabyte. In Teradata, you not only have to pay for storage, but you must pay for the compute power. This can bring the cost of storage (plus any extras) to a total of up to 10k or higher. Additionally, when the amount of time (and other resources) that can be saved by using Snowflake is considered, it becomes an even more valuable solution.

Why On-Prem Users are looking at Snowflake:

• Automate features with little to no oversight required
• Cost is lower with exponential value
• Elasticity, scalability, and consumption-based pricing
• Many partners and ELT products simply require a plugin rather than building a 3rd party API integration
• Snowflake has made migrating to the cloud even easier

What are the top concerns for migrating from Teradata to Snowflake?

These are just a few of the questions we’ve been asked by our clients:

• How secure am I in a cloud environment? Who will have access to the data?
• What does the migration process look like?
• What is the best strategy for moving my data?
• What is the timeline for a migration?
• What skill set is required to use Snowflake? What resources are available to users during the migration process?

Here at NTT DATA, we take our role seriously — which includes recognizing the concerns of our clients and listening to what they have to say. One of the top concerns for many of our clients that are looking to migrate from Teradata to Snowflake is the difference in the skill set required for Snowflake versus Teradata.

Snowflake requires a general understanding of SQL, which means that, typically, anyone with a background in SQL can learn to use Snowflake. In addition, Snowflake has a huge community base and an active forum to help answer many of the questions that may arise along the way. Snowflake also has extensive documentation to guide users line by line from setting up their accounts to managing roles.

We can assist in the implementation to help kickstart your Snowflake account. We help clients set up the process, policies, data governance, and data management to ease the transition and ensure you get the most value from Snowflake.

If you’re looking for the answers to any of these questions, please reach out. NTT DATA can help map and plan your cloud data migration, as well as see just how soon you can start receiving the full benefits of Snowflake. You’ll feel confident in understanding all that’s required to migrate your data from on-prem to the cloud.