Pros

Techology leadership with very experienced and strong technical staff. Teradata has been a market leader for many years but now is being challenged by new players in the appliance arena as well as tradtional competitors such as IBM and HP. Micorosft is also aggressively entering the market and will start to compete with Teradata, as well. Teradata needs to develop an entry level approach to the appliance market, which it is doing but it needs to focus on doing a better job of marketing this and getting the word out to potential customers that the Teradata applicance is a good entry level for them.

Cons

Teradata is more of a hardware company than a software or solutions company and as such often doesn't approach business problems with "value added" fresh ideas.

Advice to Senior Management

Become more marketing and sales driven and trust your field sales teams more than you do. Don't micromanage and don't push products on customers without being sensitive to value drivers.