September 9, 2024
Steve McMillan, CEO, Teradata
Apple Intelligence Needs Gobs of Data—And They Can’t Do It Alone, Steve McMillan – CEO Teradata
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With Apple going all in on AI to boost its next round of hardware and services with Apple Intelligence, data is needed now more than ever—massive data. More data than one company can provide, if they hope to make AI services quickly and efficiently do what’s asked, without getting bogged-down.
Another California company attacking AI plumbing problems is Teradata, one of the largest cloud analytics platforms with a focus on harmonizing data. Starting as a hardware company, making things like the first system over 1 terabyte for Walmart, Teradata has transitioned into a software company, with 7,000 employees in 41 countries who delivered $1.8 Billion in revenue last year.
On this episode of the Reboot Chronicles, Teradata CEO Steve McMillan, unpacks how he has rebooted the company and brought it into the 21st century. Listen in as we discuss how they made that transition, how AI is impacting their growth, his personal journey, and where they may end up in the revolutionary times ahead.
Transforming From Hardware To Software
Before Steve stepped in as the CEO of Teradata, they had a 40-year history of being an on-premise Hardware company making some remarkable accomplishments in on-sight data management. After he stepped in, he had a five-point plan to move the company forward, one of the points was how to become a platform-based software company. As he puts it “All the most successful software companies are platform companies that are open, they’re connected.” One of the steps to becoming this platform company was helping companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google modernize their data centers by moving them to the cloud.
Working Out New Cultural Muscles
With the change in the core services of the company and the changes that covid had on offices and workspaces, there was a much-needed shift in the company culture. This raised concerns from Steve’s team as “They seem to have worked for us for the last 40 years?” so why change? To which Steve answered that a transformation like this is “Like going to the gym, and working on a new muscle group.” You still maintain the muscles you have worked on previously, but the rest of your body becomes stronger and more agile.
The Next Generation Of Providers
With this more recent shift in Teradata’s core values, we were curious as to where Steve hopes the company will be in the next ten years, especially as AI grows and the need for smarter and faster data analytics is required. One thing Steve expects to see is that the monolithic IT stack is going to be a thing of the past as their customers will want to be more interconnected to get the best possible outcomes. When that happens, Teradata will be who they turn to as they have already positioned themselves to be in the middle of several large companies’ cloud data centers through their software services.
