Teradata Corp. today made its VantageCloud Lake analytics platform available on Microsoft Corp.’s Azure cloud computing platform.

NYSE-listed Teradata sells software that companies use to analyze their business information for useful insights. VantageCloud Lake, the platform that became available on Azure today, is a cloud-focused version of the company’s software. The platform originally debuted last August with initial support for Amazon Web Services. 

VantageCloud Lake offers a collection of analytics features not included in the original version of Teradata’s software. That feature set, which is known as ClearScape Analytics, is also a focus of today’s update.

Teradata says enterprises running VantageCloud Lake on Azure will have the ability to scale compute and storage resources separately. Historically, adding more storage capacity to an analytics environment required adding more processors even if those extra processors weren’t otherwise needed. Decoupling the two resource types allows companies to only add hardware they require and thus avoid unnecessary expenses.

According to Teradata, the Azure version of VantageCloud Lake also provides support for high availability. This is a deployment approach that involves distributing an analytics environment across multiple data centers, such as Azure cloud facilities, to reduce the risk of outages. If one data center experiences technical issues, the analytics environment can continue operating. 

VantageCloud Lake keeps information in a Microsoft service called Azure Data Lake Storage. The latter offering is a specialized version of Azure Blob Storage, the cloud platform’s object store, that provides several features not included in the standard edition. Those features include the ability to organize records in folders, which eases certain maintenance tasks, and an expanded set of cybersecurity controls.

Enterprises often buy Azure services through so-called MACC contracts. Under such contracts, a company can receive access to more favorable pricing terms if it commits to spending a certain sum on Azure. Teradata says Microsoft customers can subtract their VantageCloud Lake purchases from their MACC spending commitments, which should simplify procurement.

The other focus of today’s update is ClearScape Analytics. That’s a set of analytics features built into VantageCloud Lake. It includes, among other capabilities, a collection of tools that companies can use to create artificial intelligence training datasets.

Teradata has integrated ClearScape Analytics with Azure ML, a set of AI services in Azure. The company says the integration will simplify model development tasks such as AI scoring. That’s the practice of creating several neural networks for a machine learning project and then comparing their performance to identify which can perform the task at hand most efficiently. 

“We’re combining Teradata VantageCloud and ClearScape Analytics with Azure’s machine learning ability to simplify and accelerate the ML lifecycle,” said Erin Chapple, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Azure core product and design. “Together, our platforms ensure customers can execute complex analytics on massive data sets and incorporate their preferred data science tools like Azure ML.”

The Azure version of VantageCloud Lake is available for purchase immediately. Teradata says a number of enterprise customers are already using VantageCloud Lake in conjunction with Azure ML to power their AI scoring projects. 

Image: Teradata