Data warehousing giant Teradata is moving to bolster its capabilities for dealing with structured and unstructured data by acquiring analytics specialist Aster Data Systems.

“We are excited about the big data analytics market opportunity that Aster Data brings to Teradata. This coupled with our recent Integrated Marketing Management acquisition with Aprimo, and our increased investments into our core data warehouse business - provide three best-in-class platforms to fuel future growth for Teradata,” said Mike Koehler, president and chief executive officer of Teradata Corporation.

Teradata defines “big data” as being massive in volume with a mix of structured and unstructured data involving complex interrelationships that do not lend themselves to analysis with today’s traditional techniques. For these reasons, capturing, storing, managing and analysing it is extremely difficult. Some of the new sources of diverse, non-relational data include: web applications, sensor networks, social networks, genomics, video and photographs.

According to a recent Gartner news release, “2011 will be the year when data warehousing reaches what could well be its most-significant inflection point since its inception. Gartner firmly believes that the data warehouse ‘ideal’ is changing and will give way to new kind of warehouse that addresses more extreme types of information assets. As a result, data warehouse database management system (DBMS) vendors must begin to address numerous, new information asset formats, or be relegated to supporting roles in the future.

“In fact, we believe through 2015, organisations integrating high-value, diverse, new information types and sources into a coherent information management infrastructure will outperform their industry peers financially by more than 20 per cent.”

“We are bringing a new class of data-driven applications that leverage the power of the patent-pending SQL-MapReduce analytics and innovations related to non-relational data processing delivered with flexible and easy to use tools,” said Mayank Bawa, chief customer officer and co-founder, Aster Data. “We are really excited about the prospect for growth as we join forces with Teradata to bring Aster Data’s solutions to customers worldwide.”