Snowflake was founded in 2012 by two ex-Oracle executives to create a data platform that would harness the immense power of the cloud. By 2014, they had unveiled the Cloud Data Warehousing product, a predecessor to the current Snowflake Cloud Data Platform. The company made headlines with its successful IPO in October 2020. Globally operational, Snowflake serves over 10,000 customers across a wide variety of industries and is supported by a robust network of partners. The Snowflake marketplace supplies over 2,800 data and application solutions to its customers.
The Cloud Data Platform is known for its straightforwardness and adaptability, catering to diverse workloads. It emphasizes “Near-Zero Management,” encapsulating routine database tasks for more effortless operations. The platform’s synergy with cloud infrastructure and a unique architectural strategy ensures performance and scalability. This forms the foundation for efficient management across nine workloads, including traditional data warehousing, data lakes, marketing analytics and AI.
Accessible on Amazon, Google and Microsoft cloud platforms, the system is cloud neutral. The Amazon cloud is the top choice for most of Snowflake’s clientele. At its core, the platform utilizes the cloud provider’s object storage for fail-safe data retention. It serves as a basis for cloud services and independent processing units tailored for varied tasks. These units can be customized as required, granting dedicated data perspectives. Equipped with computational power as needed, the cloud services encompass security, metadata and data access interfaces. The scalability of services, data storage and processing nodes ensures that one workload does not compromise another’s performance. This unique architecture supports SQL interfaces, facilitating accessibility with numerous analytical tools. For intricate data operations or analytical needs, partner assistance is readily available.
An intriguing feature is the Data Marketplace, designed to foster inter-departmental collaboration through data sharing. The Marketplace offers over 2,800 solutions, up from 1,700 last year. These products come from hundreds of providers and can be tested via a free and try-and-buy model. Snowflake empowers users to distribute their data internally or with external affiliates using bespoke authorization profiles without duplicating data. Impressively, Snowflake serves 691 Forbes Global 2000 clients, handling a staggering 5.2 billion queries daily.
Snowflake’s platform offers an integrated solution for various applications ranging from cybersecurity to artificial intelligence (AI). Recent acquisitions in support of its AI strategy include Neeva, Streamlit and Applica.
