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Wal-Mart’s Plans For Its 4-Petabyte Database

Written by Evan Schuman
August 3rd, 2007

When the world's largest retailer struggles with a database issue, the numbers can be a bit daunting. It's datawarehouse, for example, is larger than 4 Petabytes. That's more than 4,096 TBytes, give or take a few million bits.

The chain has more than 6,000 stores, with some having almost a half-million SKUs each. You think your Excel spreadsheets are bad? Wal-Mart's database tables have literally 100 billion rows. The retailer's POS systems have to ring up some 276 million items—a day.

This peek into the IT operations of this $345 billion retail empire comes courtesy of a phone interview with Wal-Mart Chief Technology Officer Nancy Stewart.

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Posted in CRM, IT Strategy/Industry, Payment Systems, Premium Content
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