Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

STUDY: SINGLE DATA MARTS COSTING FORTUNE 500 OVER $1 BILLION

In a survey asking how much it costs to maintain one data mart annually, 31% reported costs in excess of $2 million. Twelve percent reported an annual cost of exactly $2 million, while 16% reported costs of $1.5 million. Another 41% reported a cost of $1 million per data mart. Yet, corporations can combine data marts into a single data warehouse and reduce their costs by millions. Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation conducted the poll via their Web site, www.teradata.com, from May 26 through June 13, 2003.

In the 2002-3 Teradata Report on Enterprise Decision-Making, Teradata found that 56% of Fortune 500 companies have between 11 and 101 data marts per company. Teradata estimates that data marts are costing the Fortune 500 more than $1 billion per year.

As it is, there is a growing belief among companies that data mart consolidation is beneficial generally as well as in terms of improving compliance and transparency in the age of Sarbanes-Oxley. However, many companies don't extrapolate this and compare it to the cost of data mart consolidation. When they do, it quickly becomes apparent that data mart consolidation is a much less expensive proposition than maintaining multiple data marts.