In today's world, most companies span several regions and sell across the world. As my Foolish colleague Morgan Housel notes, 10 years ago, less than a third of S&P 500 revenue growth came from abroad. Today, that area makes up half of the S&P 500's growth.

And that number is growing. The truth is, investors regularly underestimate how much demand comes from abroad. More importantly, for large, multinational corporations that have already established a presence in their home markets, much of their future growth comes from abroad.

With that in mind, today we're looking at Teradata (NYSE: TDC). We'll examine not only where its sales and earnings come from, but how its sales abroad have changed over time.

Where Teradata's sales were three years ago
Three years ago, Teradata saw 51% of its sales in the United States. Its second-largest market was in Europe, while Asia chipped in a respectable 19%.

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Where Teradata's sales are today
Today, Teradata is bucking the broader trend and has seen its sales to America actually rise over the past three years, while its sales percentage to Asia decreased.

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Why is Teradata seeing its sales growth trailing in Asia while other companies across the world are seeing stunning growth in the region? One simple explanation is that Teradata's sales in the region are skewed toward Japan. Like Europe, that's a market that's been sputtering the past few years.

However, there are signs Teradata could be once again gaining traction in Asia. For one, a number of IT firms have reported strong growth in Japan. Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), another IT-focused company that, like Teradata, sees 16% of its sales from Asia, reported Japan was its fastest growing market last quarter. Likewise, Teradata reported Asia was its fastest growing geography with 28% growth last quarter. On the company's conference call, CEO Mike Koehler specifically cited strength in Japan as a key factor.

In the end, while Teradata must compete with players who have already established a global presence like Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) in the booming data warehousing market, this is a technology that will become important to a variety of global businesses in the next decade. I've called advanced IT the "opportunity of the century" because global leaders can see their technologies adopted in every market. Simply put, it's a global winner-take-all market. If Teradata is to live up to its lofty valuation, I expect that it could see some pretty heady growth away from the United States in the decade to come.

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