I had written in my prior post that Big Data Appliances are coming around the corner and it looks like deja vu all over again.
Teradata today announced the new Teradata Aster Big Data Appliance, and yes as the name spells it all it is the first integration product from the stables combining not only Aster and its legendary platform with the bells and whistles of Teradata platform in terms of management tools and hardware capabilities and combining the Hadoop integration with Hortonworks
The system in my opinion is a perfect combination of power and ruggedness with a lot of finesse and it differs from competitive announcements on these grounds
1. Aster's patented Sql-H and its legendary scalability architecture
2. 50 plus analytical functions designed to work on large data sets
3. SQL-MapReduce combining SQL and MapReduce, which was an Aster core strength in 2009
4. Teradata Viewpoint - a well known and tested management tool for the platform - extended to include Aster and Hadoop
5. Teradata TVI a very sophisticated hardware support and failure prevention software
6. Infiniband network interconnect - makes ultra-high-performance
connectivity between Aster and Hadoop, as well as scalability, a
non-issue
For those of you who have been around these platforms, it definitely is not a me-too solution or taking existing solutions and re-integrating or re-branding them. Neither is the platform configuration a custom build. From a CIO's perspective this is where the Teradata Aster Big Data Appliance makes a strong business case, it brings all proven and tested technologies in a appliance footprint with all the configurations required to handle the onslaught of Big Data.
As a Big Data practitioner and a Data Warehouse evangelist, what truly is a future think architecture from my perspective is the "unified architecture". This is where the rubber meets the road in my opinion and I have discussed a similar solution in any seminar or discussions that I continue to have on Big Data.

What this architecture does for you as a user is creating two platforms at a the same time - one for exploration and mining purposes and the other for analytics and management reporting. You can push workloads across the different architectures here and leverage the power of all the pieces of the infrastructure. With the right approach and solution architectures, enterprises can take a giant leap forward for the Big Data journey on these type of platforms.
The engineering efforts of Teradata, Aster and HortonWorks speaks for itself in terms of performance tests. I look forward to more testing and benchmarking results on large data volumes.
While all the technology announcements till date have been very innovation focused, this one makes a business case at the very introduction itself and that is what gets a business executives attention. The passion and commitment of all the teams involved shows off in the appliance performance from current tests and recorded benchmarks.
This is not the last of the appliances, there are more to come and the users will have a greater choice. If I were to compare anything in the Auto industry today with these appliances, Teradata Aster Big Data Appliance is like the next generation of Prius with more bells and whistles, while IBM Pure is like a custom built souped up supercar. Both have their enthusiasts and loyalists, while both have been able to address different user needs.
Whichever is the direction one chooses, this is the dream come true era for many solution architects, DBA's and CIO's.