You should carefully consider each of the following risk factors and all of the other information set forth in this Annual Report. Based on the information currently known to us, we believe that the following information identifies the most significant risk factors affecting our company in each of these categories of risks. However, the risks and uncertainties our company faces are not limited to those set forth in the risk factors described below. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently believe to be immaterial may also adversely affect our business.

In addition, past financial performance may not be a reliable indicator of future performance, and historical trends should not be used to anticipate results or trends in future periods.

If any of the following risks and uncertainties develops into actual events, these events could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. In such case, the trading price of our common stock could decline.

Economic Pressures and Uncertainty—Our business is affected by the global economies in which we operate and the economic climate of the industries we serve.

Our business and results of operations are affected by international, national and regional economic conditions. In particular, the IT industry in which we operate is susceptible to significant changes in the strength of the economy and the financial health of companies who make capital commitments for new technologies. Accordingly, downturns in the global or regional economies in which we operate or certain economic sectors (such as the retail, manufacturing or financial services industries) may adversely impact our business. For example, adverse changes to the economy could impact the timing of purchases by our current and potential customers or the ability of our customers to fulfill their obligations to us. In addition, decreased or more closely scrutinized capital spending in our customers’ businesses and in the industries we also serve may adversely impact our business. Uncertainty about future economic conditions makes it difficult for us to forecast operating results and to make decisions about future investments. Accordingly, global economic and market conditions may cause material impacts on our results of operations, prospects and financial condition. The Company’s success in periods of economic uncertainty is also dependent, in part, on our ability to reduce costs in response to changes in demand and other activity.

Competition—The information technology industry is intensely competitive and evolving, and competitive pressures could adversely affect our pricing practices or demand for our products and services.

We operate in the intensely competitive IT industry, which is characterized by rapidly changing technology, evolving industry standards, frequent new product introductions, and price and cost reductions. In general, as a participant in the data warehousing market, we face:

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To compete successfully in this environment, we must rapidly and continually design, develop and market solutions and related products and services that are valued in the marketplace. To do this, we must react on a timely basis to shifts in market demands. In addition, our market position depends on our ability to continually improve the price/performance of our solutions without creating operating inefficiencies and to sustain competitive operating margins, while also maintaining the quality of our products and services. Reacting quickly to improve the value of our product offerings while maintaining margins can be particularly important.

Our primary competitors are IBM and Oracle, who are well-capitalized companies with widespread distribution, brand recognition and penetration of platforms and service offerings. The significant purchasing and market power of these larger competitors, which have greater financial resources than we do, could allow them to surpass our market penetration and marketing efforts to promote and sell their products and services. In addition, many other companies participate in specific areas of our business, such as enterprise application analytic and business intelligence software. In some cases we may partner with a company in one area of our business and compete with them in another. The status of our business relationships with these companies can influence our ability to compete in data warehousing opportunities in such areas. We also expect additional competition from both established and emerging companies. Failure to compete successfully with new or existing competitors in these and other areas could have a material adverse impact on our ability to generate additional revenues or sustain existing revenue levels.

Data Warehousing Market—If the overall data warehousing market declines or does not grow, we may sell fewer products and services, and our business may not be able to sustain its current level of operations.

If the market trends toward more limited IT spending, or limited liquidity, this could result in fewer customers making, or customers delaying investments in our products and services. In the past, we have seen periodic breaks in the buying patterns from some of our larger customers, which indicate a level of maturation of their current data warehouse implementation or a shifting of IT priorities when these customers are still incorporating the investments they have made in their core data warehousing infrastructures during past years. In addition, reduced prices and improvements in data warehousing solutions increase pressure on our product revenues and margins, as well as on the annuity streams we receive from our maintenance business. If the growth rates for the data warehousing market decline for any reason, there could be a decrease in demand for our products and services, which would have a material adverse effect on our financial results.

Renewal Rates and Support Services Pricing Pressures—If our existing customers fail to renew their support agreements, or if customers do not license updated products on terms favorable to us, our revenues could be adversely affected.

We currently derive a significant portion of our overall revenues from maintenance services and software subscriptions, and we depend on our installed customer base for future revenue from maintenance services and software subscriptions and licenses of updated products. The terms of our standard maintenance services and software subscription arrangements generally provide for the payment of license fees and prepayment of first-year support fees and are generally renewable on an annual basis. The IT industry generally has been experiencing increasing pricing pressure from customers when purchasing or renewing support agreements. Moreover, the

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trend towards consolidation in certain industries that we serve, such as financial services and telecommunications, could result in a reduction of the software and hardware being serviced and put pressure on our maintenance terms with customers who have merged. Given this environment, there can be no assurance that our current customers will renew their maintenance agreements or agree to the same terms when they renew, which could result in our reducing or losing maintenance fees.

If our existing customers fail to renew their maintenance agreements, or if we are unable to generate additional maintenance fees through the license of updated products to existing or new customers, our business and future operating results could be adversely affected.

Operating Result Fluctuations—Our financial results are subject to fluctuations caused by many factors that could result in our failing to achieve anticipated financial results.

Our quarterly and annual financial results have varied in the past and are likely to continue to vary in the future due to a number of factors, many of which are beyond our control. In particular, if transactions that we expect to close by the end of a quarter are not closed until a later date, our revenue and/or net income for that quarter could be substantially below expectations, especially given the large size of our transactions. These and any one or more of the factors listed below or other factors could cause us not to achieve our revenue or profitability expectations. The resulting failure to meet market expectations could cause a decrease in our stock price. These factors include the risks discussed elsewhere in this section and the following:

A change in our effective tax rate can have a significant adverse impact on our business.

A number of factors may adversely impact our future effective tax rates, such as the jurisdictions in which our profits are determined to be earned and taxed; the resolution of issues arising from tax audits with various tax authorities; changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities; adjustments to estimated taxes upon finalization of various tax returns; changes in available tax credits, especially surrounding tax credits in the United States for our research and development activities; and the repatriation of non-U.S. earnings for which we have not previously provided for U.S. taxes. Tax authorities may disagree with certain positions we have taken and assess additional taxes. We regularly assess the likely outcomes of these audits in order to determine the appropriateness of our tax provision, however, there can be no assurance that we will accurately predict the outcomes of these audits, and the actual outcomes of these audits could have a material impact on our net income or financial condition. Changes in tax laws or tax rulings could materially impact our effective tax rate. For example, proposals for fundamental U.S. international tax reform, if enacted, could have a significant adverse impact on our future results of operations.

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Unanticipated delays or accelerations in our sales cycles make accurate estimation of our revenues difficult and could result in significant fluctuations in our quarterly operating results.

The size and timing of large orders for our products and services varies considerably, which can impact results from quarter to quarter. The process we use to forecast sales and trends in our business relies heavily on estimates of closure on a transaction-specific basis. It is very difficult to predict sales in a particular quarter or over a longer period of time. Unanticipated delays or accelerations in our sales cycles make accurate estimation of our revenues difficult and could result in significant fluctuations in our quarterly operating results.

The length of our sales cycle varies depending on a number of factors over which we may have little or no control, including the size and complexity of a potential transaction, the level of competition that we encounter in our selling activities and our current and potential customers’ internal budgeting and approval process. As a result of a generally long sales cycle, we may expend significant effort over a long period of time in an attempt to obtain an order, but ultimately not complete the sale, or the order ultimately received may be smaller than anticipated. Our revenue from different customers varies from quarter to quarter, and a customer with a large order in one quarter may generate significantly lower revenue in subsequent quarters. Our results in any particular quarter have generally been dependent on the timing of a relatively small number of large transactions.

Due to resulting fluctuations, we believe that quarter-to-quarter comparisons of our revenue and operating results may not be meaningful, and that these comparisons may not be an accurate indicator of our future performance.

In addition, the budgeting and IT capital spending cycles of our customers and potential customers make forecasting more difficult and may adversely affect our ability to accurately predict financial results. Spending may be particularly heavy in our fourth quarter because of large enterprise customers placing orders before the expiration of IT budgets tied to that calendar year.

Our operating expenses are based on projected annual and quarterly revenue levels and are generally incurred ratably throughout each quarter. Since our operating expenses are relatively fixed in the short term, failure to generate projected revenues for a specified period could adversely impact our operating results, reducing net income or causing an operating loss for that period. The deferral or non-occurrence of such sales revenues could materially adversely affect our operating results for that quarter and could impair our business in future periods.

Seasonal trends in sales of our products and services could adversely affect our quarterly operating results.

In general, we see fluctuations in buying patterns with lower revenue in the first quarter and higher revenue in the fourth quarter of each year. Such seasonality also causes our working capital cash flow requirements to vary from quarter to quarter depending on the variability in the volume, timing and mix of product sales. In addition, revenue in the third month of each quarter has historically been significantly higher than in the first and second months, which further impacts our ability to predict financial results accurately and enhances the enterprise risks inherent in our business. These and other factors make forecasting more difficult and may adversely affect our ability to predict financial results accurately.

Revenue Mix Variability—Our revenue is variable depending on the mix of products and services in any given period, and changes in the mix of products and services that we sell could materially adversely affect our operating results.

Our business model is based on our anticipated mix of products and services and the corresponding profit margins for such products and services. Unanticipated shifts in such mix could adversely impact our results of operations and require changes to our business model. Consulting services margins are generally lower than the other elements of our data warehousing solutions. In addition, when we use third parties to supplement the services we provide to customers, this generally results in lower margin rates. As a result, increases in consulting services revenues as a percentage of our total revenues may decrease overall margins.

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We also realize different margins on certain components we re-sell as part of our solutions, and the mix of such third-party hardware varies from quarter to quarter depending on customer requirements. In addition, changes in the price and performance of our data warehousing hardware could negatively impact maintenance and support services, and software subscription revenues.

Advancement of Our Solutions—The solutions we sell are advanced, and we need to rapidly and successfully develop and introduce new solutions in a competitive, demanding and rapidly changing environment.

To succeed in the intensely competitive IT industry, we must continually improve and refresh our product and service offerings to include newer features, functionality or solutions, and keep pace with price-to-performance gains in the IT industry. Shortened product life cycles due to customer demands and competitive pressures impact the pace at which we must introduce and implement new technology. This requires a high level of innovation by both our software developers and the suppliers of the third-party software components included in our systems. In addition, bringing new solutions to the market entails a costly and lengthy process, and requires us to accurately anticipate customer needs and technology trends. We must continue to respond to market demands, develop leading technologies and maintain leadership in data warehouse performance and scalability, or our business operations may be adversely affected.

We must also anticipate and respond to customer demands regarding the compatibility of our current and prior offerings. These demands could hinder the pace of introducing and implementing new technology. Our future results may be affected if our products cannot effectively interface and perform well with software products of other companies and with our customers’ existing IT infrastructures, or if we are unsuccessful in our efforts to enter into agreements allowing integration of third-party technology with the Teradata database platform. Our efforts to develop the interoperability of our products may require significant investments of capital and employee resources. In addition, many of our principal products are used with products offered by third parties and, in the future, some vendors of non-Teradata products may become less willing to provide us with access to their products, technical information and marketing and sales support.

As a result of these and other factors, our ability to introduce new or improved solutions could be adversely impacted. There can be no assurance that our innovations will be profitable, and if we cannot successfully market and sell both existing and newly developed solutions, our business and operating results could be impacted. If we were to lose our significant technology advantage, our market share and growth could be adversely affected. In addition, if we are unable to deliver products, features, and functionality as projected, we may be unable to meet our commitments to customers, which could have an adverse affect on our reputation and business.

Highly Advanced Products—Our products include highly advanced technology, and as we develop new products with greater capacity and performance capabilities, the increased difficulty and complexity associated with producing these products increases the likelihood of reliability, quality or operability problems.

Despite rigorous testing prior to their release and superior quality processes, our software and hardware products may contain undetected errors or security flaws, which may be found after the products are introduced and shipped. This risk is enhanced when products are first introduced or when new versions are released, as well as when we develop products with more advanced technology, since the increased difficulty and complexity associated with producing these products increases the likelihood of reliability, quality or operability problems. The correction and detection of errors may cause delays, lost revenues and incremental costs. Errors in our software products could also affect the ability of our products to work with other hardware or software products, could delay the development or release of new products or new versions of products, and could adversely affect market acceptance of our products. While we attempt to remedy errors that we believe would be considered critical by our customers prior to shipment, we may not be able to detect or remedy all such errors.

Our customers who rely on our solutions for business-critical applications are more sensitive to product errors, which could expose us to product liability, performance and warranty claims, as well as harm our reputation. These and other risks associated with new product and service offerings may have a material adverse impact on our results of operations and future performance.

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Product introductions and certain enhancements of existing products by us in the future periods may also reduce demand for our existing products or could delay purchases by customers awaiting arrival of our new products. As new or enhanced products are introduced, we must successfully manage the transition from older products.

In the ordinary course of business, we continually evaluate opportunities for new product and service offerings, new markets and new geographic sectors, and development of such opportunities could entail certain business risks which could affect our financial condition.

Security Lapses—The confidentiality of information we hold or the security of our computer systems could be jeopardized.

We operate pursuant to a business-to-business model, and therefore we normally do not handle large volumes of personally identifiable information for our customers—such as employee data, customer data, data that our customers collect from their customers, and information regulated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. However, some of our services require us to have access to such highly confidential information. If unauthorized access to or use of such information occurs, despite our data security measures to protect it, our results of operation and relationship with our customers could be adversely impacted.

Reliance on Third Parties—Our future results depend in part on our relationships with key suppliers, strategic partners and other third parties.

Our development, marketing and distribution strategies depend in part on our ability to form strategic alliances with third parties that have complementary products, software, services and skills. Our strategic partners include consultants and system integrators, software and technology providers, and indirect channel distributors in certain countries. These relationships create risks beyond our control of our partners changing their business focus, entering into strategic alliance with other companies, being acquired by our competitors, failing to meet performance criteria or improperly using our confidential information. If we fail to maintain or expand our relationships with strategic partners, our business may be adversely affected.

Third-party vendors provide important elements to our solutions; if we do not maintain our relationships with these vendors or if these vendors cease to be going concerns, interruptions in the supply of our products may result. There are some components of our solutions that we purchase from single sources due to price, quality, technology or other reasons. For example, we have relied on Flextronics as a key single source contract manufacturer for our hardware systems for the last several years. In addition, we depend on Accenture for certain transaction processing services, and buy silicon computer chips and microprocessors from Intel Corporation, and storage disk systems from LSI Corporation and EMC Corporation. Some components supplied by third parties may be critical to our solutions, and several of our suppliers may terminate their agreements with us without cause with 180 days notice. If we were unable to purchase necessary services, parts, components or products from a particular vendor and had to find an alternative supplier, our shipments and deliveries could be delayed, and our operations could be adversely impacted.

In addition, smaller suppliers have operating risks that could impact our business. These risks could create product time delays, inventory and invoicing problems, staging delays, and other operational difficulties. We could also be impacted by their inability to provide high-quality products or services that conform to required specifications or contractual arrangements, which could negatively impact our business and operating results.

Reliance on the Intellectual Property of Third Parties—The loss of our rights to use software licensed to us by third parties could harm our business.

We have an active partner program that offers rights to sublicense third party software as part of a complete suite of solutions for our customers. This offering, as well as our reliance on third party software and licenses in our operating system software and business, creates risks that are not present when developing software in-house. For example, the viability, reliability and quality of such partners’ businesses, as well as their ability to fulfill their obligations to us, are factors that come into play and could adversely affect our financial condition. Our

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operations could also be impacted if we are forced to seek alternative technology, or technology for new solutions, that may not be available on commercially reasonable terms. Also, many of our offerings are complemented by technologies developed by others, and if we are unable to continue to obtain licenses for such technologies at competitive prices, our business could be impacted.

Intellectual Property—If we are unable to develop, preserve and protect our intellectual property assets, our operating results may be adversely affected.

As a technology company, our intellectual property portfolio is crucial to our continuing ability to be a leading data warehouse solutions provider. We strive to protect and enhance our proprietary intellectual property rights through patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret laws, as well as through technological safeguards. These efforts include protection of the products and application, diagnostic and other software we develop.

To the extent we are not successful, our business could be materially adversely impacted. We may be unable to prevent third parties from using our technology without our authorization or independently developing technology that is similar to ours, particularly in those countries where the laws do not protect our proprietary rights as fully as in the United States. With respect to our pending patent applications, we may not be successful in securing patents for these claims, and our competitors may already have applied for patents that, once issued, will prevail over our patent rights or otherwise limit our ability to sell our products.

While we take steps to provide for confidentiality obligations of employees and third parties with whom we do business (including customers, suppliers and strategic partners), there is a risk that such parties will breach such obligations and jeopardize our intellectual property rights. Many customers have outsourced the administration and management of their data warehouses to third parties, including some of our competitors, who then have access to our confidential information. Although we have agreements in place to mitigate this risk, there can be no assurance that such protections will be sufficient. In addition, our ability to capture and re-use field-based developed intellectual property is important to future business opportunities and margins.

We are actively engaged in efforts to protect the value of our intellectual property and to prevent others from infringing our intellectual property rights. However, due to the complex and technical nature of such efforts and the potentially high stakes involved, such enforcement activity can be expensive and time consuming, and there can be no assurance that we will be successful in these efforts.

Research and Development—We make significant investments in research and development and cannot assure that these investments will be profitable.

As part of our business strategy, we must continue to dedicate a significant amount of resources to our research and development efforts in order to maintain our competitive position. However, we may not expect to receive significant revenues from these investments for several years, if at all. Research and development expenses represent a significant portion of our discretionary fixed costs. We believe these new technologies could significantly improve our products and services over the long-term. However, if we have invested too much in these or other technologies, our results of operations could be adversely affected. In addition, as we replace our existing assets with new, higher cost assets, we expect that our depreciation expense will increase, which will contribute to our high level of fixed costs and reduce our earnings.

Intellectual Property Infringement Claims by Third Parties—Claims by others that we infringe their intellectual property rights could harm our business and financial condition.

We have seen a trend towards aggressive enforcement of intellectual property rights as the functionality of products in our industry increasingly overlaps and the volume of issued software patents continues to grow. As a result, there is a risk that we could be subject to infringement claims which, regardless of their validity, could:

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Regardless of whether these claims have any merit, they can be burdensome to defend or settle and can harm our business and reputation.

Open Source Software—The growing market acceptance of open source software presents benefits and challenges for our industry.

We have developed a version of the Teradata database software to operate on the LINUX open source platform and have incorporated other types of open source software into our products, allowing us to enhance certain solutions without incurring substantial additional research and development costs and expand our solution offerings. “Open source” software is made widely available by its authors and is licensed for a nominal fee or, in some cases, at no charge. For example, LINUX is a free UNIX-type operating system, and the source code for LINUX is freely available. While we believe our contractual obligations are limited with respect to such software, no assurances can be given that unanticipated problems arising from our use of open source software will not arise in the future.

Open source licenses typically mandate that proprietary software, when combined in specific ways with open source software, become subject to the open source license. We take steps to ensure that our proprietary software is not combined with, or does not incorporate, open source software in ways that would require our proprietary software to be subject to an open source license. However, few courts have interpreted the open source licenses, and the manner in which these licenses may be interpreted and enforced is therefore subject to uncertainty.

International Operations—Generating substantial revenues from our multinational operations helps us to meet our strategic goals, but poses a number of risks.

In 2010, the percentage of our total revenues from outside of the United States was 45%. We believe that our geographic diversity may help to mitigate some risks associated with geographic concentrations of operations ( e.g. , adverse changes in foreign currency exchange rates and deteriorating economic environments or business disruptions due to economic or political uncertainties). However, our ability to sell our solutions internationally is subject to the following risks, among others:

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Our products are subject to U.S. export controls and, when exported from the United States, or re-exported to another country, must be authorized under applicable U.S. export regulations. Changes in our products or changes in export regulations may create delays in the introduction of our products in international markets, prevent our customers with international operations from deploying our products throughout their global systems or, in some cases, prevent the export of our products to certain countries or customers altogether. Any change in export regulations or related legislation, shift in approach to the enforcement or scope of existing regulations, or change in the countries, persons or technologies targeted by these regulations could result in decreased use of our products by, or in our decreased ability to export or sell our products to, existing or potential customers with international operations.

Foreign Currency Fluctuations

Our revenue and operating income are subject to variability due to the effects of foreign currency fluctuations against the U.S. dollar. We have exposure to approximately 30 functional currencies. The primary currencies to which we are exposed include the euro, British pound, Japanese yen, the Australian dollar, the Canadian dollar, and other Asian and South American currencies. A significant portion of our revenue and operating income is generated outside the United States, and therefore our financial results may fluctuate due to the effects of such foreign currency fluctuations, which are difficult to predict.

Dependence on Key Employees—We depend on key employees and face competition in hiring and retaining qualified employees.

Our employees are critical to our success. Our future success depends on our ability to attract and retain the services of senior management and key personnel in all functional areas of our company, including engineering and development, marketing and sales professionals, and consultants. Competition for highly skilled personnel in the IT industry is intense. No assurance can be made that key personnel will remain with us, and it may be difficult and costly to replace such employees. Our failure to hire, retain and replace our key personnel could have a material adverse impact on our business operations.

Internal Controls—Inadequate internal control over financial reporting and accounting practices could lead to errors, which could adversely impact our ability to assure timely and accurate financial reporting.

Internal control over financial reporting, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable, not absolute, assurance that the control objectives will be met. These inherent limitations include system errors, the potential for human error and unauthorized actions of employees or contractors, inadequacy of controls, temporary lapses in controls due to shortfalls in transition planning and oversight or resources, and other factors. Consequently, such controls may not prevent or detect misstatements in our reported financial results as required under SEC and New York Stock Exchange (“NYSE”) rules, which could increase our operating costs or impair our ability to operate our business. Controls may also become inadequate due to changes in circumstances, and it is necessary to replace, upgrade or modify our internal information systems from time to time. In addition, unforeseen risks may arise in connection with financial reporting systems due to inefficient business processes or business process reengineering projects.

If management is not successful in maintaining a strong internal control environment, material weaknesses could occur, causing investors to lose confidence in our reported financial information. This could lead to a decline in our stock price, limit our ability to access the capital markets in the future, and require us to incur additional costs to improve our internal control systems and procedures.

Damage to Our Information Systems—Our information systems, computer equipment and information databases are critical to our business operations, and any damage or disruptions could adversely affect our operations.

Our operations are dependent on our ability to protect our computer equipment and the information stored in our databases from damage by, among other things, earthquake, fire, natural disaster, power loss, telecommunications

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failures, unauthorized intrusions and other events. A significant part of our operations is based in an area of California that has experienced power outages and earthquakes and is considered seismically active. Despite our contingency planning, events of this nature may still result in system failures and other interruptions in our operations, which could have a material adverse effect on our business and financial condition.

In addition, it is periodically necessary to replace, upgrade or modify our internal information systems. If we are unable to do this in a timely and cost-effective manner, especially in light of demands on our IT resources, our ability to capture and process financial transactions and therefore our financial condition or results of operations may be adversely impacted.

Acquisitions and Alliances—Our ability to successfully integrate acquisitions and effectively manage acquisition and alliance activities may be an important element of future growth.

We are continually evaluating the most effective ways to extend Teradata’s core technology and expand our family of compatible data warehouse platforms and software applications to address multiple market segments and solution offerings. From time to time, this includes using acquisitions, equity investments, joint ventures or strategic alliances. For example, Teradata recently acquired Aprimo, an integrated marketing software company on January 21, 2011. Such transactions entail various risks, including risks associated with:

Our operating results may fluctuate as a result of acquisitions and related integration activities, as well as other strategic growth transactions, and there is a risk that our financial results may be adversely affected.

Legal Contingencies and Regulatory Matters—Like other technology companies, we face uncertainties with regard to lawsuits, regulations and other related matters.

In the normal course of business, we are subject to proceedings, lawsuits, claims and other matters, including those that relate to the environment, health and safety, employee benefits, export compliance, intellectual property, and other regulatory compliance and general matters. See “Note 8—Commitments and Contingencies” in Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements elsewhere in this Annual Report. Because such matters are subject to many uncertainties, their outcomes are not predictable. While we believe that amounts provided in our consolidated financial statements are currently adequate in light of the probable and estimable liabilities, there can be no assurances that the amounts required to satisfy alleged liabilities from such matters will not impact future operating results.

In addition, we are subject to diverse and complex laws and regulations, including those relating to corporate governance, public disclosure and reporting—which are rapidly changing and subject to many possible changes in the future. From time to time, we may conduct internal investigations in connection with our efforts to ensure compliance with such laws and regulations, the costs or results of which could impact our results. Laws and regulations impacting our customers, such as those relating to privacy and data protection, could also impact our future business.

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In addition, our facilities and operations, including former facilities and former operations for which we may have liabilities, are subject to a wide range of environmental protection laws. There have not been any known actual material effects that compliance with environmental provisions has had upon the capital expenditures, earnings or competitive position of the Company or its subsidiaries, and there are no material estimated capital expenditures for environmental remediation or liabilities planned. However, we do expect to incur some costs in connection with compliance with these matters and given the uncertainties inherent in such activities, there can be no assurances that the costs required to comply with applicable environmental laws will not adversely impact future operating results.

There is an increased focus by the SEC on Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) enforcement activities. Given the breadth and scope of our international operations, we may not be able to detect improper or unlawful conduct by our international partners and employees, despite our high ethics, governance and compliance standards, which could put the Company at risk regarding possible violations of laws, including the FCPA.

Management time and resources are spent to understand and comply with changing laws, regulations and standards relating to such matters as corporate governance, accounting principles, public disclosure (including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002), SEC regulations, Basel II and the rules of the NYSE where our shares are listed. Although we do not believe that recent regulatory and legal initiatives will result in significant changes to our internal practices or our operations, rapid changes in accounting standards, and federal securities laws and regulations, among others, may substantially increase costs to our organization and could have an impact on our future operating results.

Other Factors—There are a number of other factors that could cause our operating results to fluctuate and could have a material adverse impact on our financial condition.

Our revenue and operating results could fluctuate for a number of reasons, including, among other things:

Contractual Obligations of Consulting Services: We maintain a consulting services workforce to fulfill contracts that we enter into with our customers that may extend to multiple periods. Our profitability is largely a function of performing to customer contractual arrangements within the estimated costs to perform these obligations. If we exceed these estimated costs, our profitability related to these contracts may be negatively impacted. In addition, if we are unable to maintain appropriate utilization rates for our consultants, we may not be able to sustain profitability on these contracts.

Management Assumptions, Estimates and Judgments: In connection with the preparation of the Company’s financial statements, we are required to make assumptions, estimates and judgments that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenues, expenses and the related disclosure of contingent liabilities. For additional information regarding the Company’s use of assumptions, estimates and judgments, see “Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates” in Item 7 of Part II of this Annual Report.