The Value of Snowflake

One of the key differentiators Snowflake introduced from the outset was its simplicity, which eliminated the need for any infrastructure management. I remember when I first started working with Snowflake six years ago. At the time, I was involved in a project where adding just 10 nodes to a Big data cluster typically took around six to twelve months. Snowflake, on the other hand, allowed us to create over 200 nodes with, quite literally, just four clicks. Of course, as Spider-Man famously said, “With great power comes great responsibility,” so it’s essential to have the proper governance framework in place to avoid platform misuse, though this is true for any data platform.

Snowflake’s approach to simplicity has drastically transformed the data landscape over the past three to four years. Previously, big data technologies that required complex infrastructure and development skills (with terms like multithreading, concurrency, and distributed programming being commonplace) dominated the scene. However, the shift towards Cloud Data Warehousing and SQL, driven by Snowflake, has led many competitors to follow suit. In my opinion, Snowflake still remains a step ahead of them.

Another question that CDOs and CIOs face when adopting new technology is: “What do I do with my existing skilled team?” Once again, Snowflake disrupted the status quo with its SQL-first strategy, particularly at a time when Spark was predominant. This made it incredibly straightforward to repurpose existing Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, and even ETL teams to Snowflake. I can attest to this personally, I’ve trained Oracle PL/SQL developers who became proficient with Snowflake in just two weeks, and within a month, they were as efficient as they had been with Oracle.

In summary, Snowflake’s commitment to the KISS principle has proven to be the right strategy, especially as data teams have often struggled to deliver value. However, the real triumph lies in maintaining the unlimited scalability and performance that cloud environments offer.

In recent years, Snowflake has focused on data sharing, with their data marketplace and approach to data clean rooms being true game changers. And last but not least, their approach to AI and generative AI is notably different, allowing you to run your AI and generative AI models directly from SQL, making these capabilities accessible to everyone.