NCR Donates Technology to Walton College Enterprise Curriculum

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The Sam M. Walton College of Business announced that NCR Corp. of Dayton, Ohio, has donated a new Teradata System and software valued at $1.1 million for the information systems and computer science and computer engineering students at the University of Arkansas.

In 2000, NCR partnered with the Walton College, the College of Engineering and UA University IT Services to provide a Teradata System valued at more than $7 million dollars. The first system had 1.7 gigabytes of storage. This new gift is an update of the Teradata technology with a 5251 system and 5.4 terabytes of disk storage. The new 5251 system represents a 400 percent improvement in performance over the previous NCR gift. It also includes on-site maintenance, training and consultation. The Teradata System is the ultimate business intelligence platform and is used by many large organizations for data analysis and decision making.

"We would like to thank NCR for making this technology experience possible for our students and faculty," said Walton College Dean Dan Worrell. "The Teradata System complements our other technology gifts. The Walton College continues to be one of the few business schools offering such a full range of technology to its students."

"NCR Teradata is the world’s most proven and powerful database for enterprise data warehousing," said Fred Davis, chair of the information systems department and holder of the David D. Glass Chair in Information Systems. "We are very grateful to NCR for giving our students and faculty access to some of the more leading-edge technology in the world. This technology plays a key role in our Enterprise Computing Curriculum."

Joe Rarey, director of the Teradata Wal-Mart global support team, said, "The system provides invaluable educational opportunities for computer and information systems graduates as well as business students."

David Douglas, professor of information systems, said: "We cannot thank NCR enough for this gift. The initiative with NCR will provide our students with opportunities for analyzing data that would not otherwise be possible. In addition to the gift of hardware and software, NCR provided the human resources necessary to install, configure and test the system to ensure the system became operational as quickly as possible. Finally, NCR has also agreed to include hardware maintenance and support as part of their generous gift. NCR and its Teradata Division are considered valued partners to the University of Arkansas."

Data warehousing is a critical concept in business and other organizations. It uses enormous databases to allow knowledge workers to answer complex questions and perform sophisticated analyses of the database to extract information to use in managing the enterprise. Many students in the Walton College and the College of Engineering will greatly benefit from the Terradata technology. A number of very large databases containing actual data have been donated by several large businesses and will be housed on the system.

Paul Cronan, holder of the M.D. Matthews Chair and director of Enterprise Computing, said: "The goal of enterprise computing at the University of Arkansas is to help students better understand how data warehousing, e-business, and other large-scale systems work together to support management decision-making. This fabulous gift from NCR helps transform the university into a 'world class’ information technology center. With this hardware and software gift, students can utilize multiple large-scale computing platforms as a routine part of their studies."

The Walton College also houses major technology gifts from IBM, SAP and Oracle. "The University of Arkansas is one of the few schools that can offer its students this 'industrial strength’ combination of real-world technology," said Davis. "We are preparing students to be highly productive as they enter the workforce in information technology organizations of businesses."