Easy, efficient, and trusted. These were the three keywords that played out on the screen and on the stage at Snowflake’s World Tour London event at the Excel earlier this week.
Sridhar Ramaswamy, the company’s CEO, took to the stage for the opening keynote to reiterate how Snowflake - together with partners - is helping customers navigate myriad new and emerging challenges.
“The scale of the platform is truly massive with over five billion jobs running on a daily basis. We see our customers executing their data strategies through a variety of architectures. There are thousands of customers sharing data. We call these points of sharing stable edges and it demonstrates the value of collaboration on data,” he said.
“And that’s just where we are today. So what’s next? Together, we are ushering in the era of enterprise AI. An era where AI is easy, efficient, and trusted. An era where you can focus on the future of your business and stay ahead. And we are here to help make this possible.”
There’s no question that businesses of all sizes are currently enveloped in a world of opportunity, intrigue, and - at times - concern - about how AI will disrupt and transform the world around them. But Snowflake, Ramaswamy says, is prepped and primed to assist.
Ramaswamy went on to say that the AI data cloud delivers on enterprise needs by being both an AI-powered data platform and a data-powered AI platform at the same time.
“Much like cloud computing enabled a reinvention of the data platform, AI is already transforming [workloads and business],” he said.
“AI will become a co-pilot for data engineers and anyone working with data. And that is the power of an AI-powered data platform.”
Ramaswamy continued: “AI has become the new interface to data and knowledge. We all love chatbots that can give us reliable answers. There’s a potential for AI to augment and transform every function in the company and also unleash entirely new biz models. To make that a reality, though, you need an AI platform and it needs to be built around your enterprise data.”
Importantly, Ramaswamy wasn’t simply paying lip service to all the good on offer. He also highlighted the challenges that organizations face, citing there were three key areas of concern: Rising complexity, controlling costs, and security and privacy.
“Now that you are ready to take advantage of AI to get more out of your data you have to recognize there are challenges to getting there. First, as you manage more data across sources, you end up creating complexity. And, of course, you have to control costs. Finally, you have to navigate growing security and privacy constraints amidst increasing regulation,” he said.
Complexity, according to Ramaswamy, is something Snowflake has been focused on since its foundation, meaning the company is very well placed to help firms address these challenges head-on.
“Complexity is driven by silos of data. Siloed data and siloed tools that prevent you from accessing insights. You’re likely forced to leverage specialized skills just to move data from place to place and you have to be able to patchwork up,” he added.
“This is a foundational problem and if you don’t fix this, all other initiatives including your AI data strategy will get slowed down or not even get off the ground.”
What matters most here, according to Ramaswamy, is ensuring clarity and focusing on what matters most. This, he said, is “building and executing on your data strategy.”
Alas, vendors are also part of the problem when it comes to increasing complexity, which Ramaswamy acknowledged.
“Complexity, unfortunately, is also driven by vendors. Many vendors sell you parts of a car and tell you to build it yourself. At Snowflake we have a different philosophy. We want to give you the car. We go out of our way to obstruct complexity for you so that we make it easy to derive value from your data and accelerate your AI strategy,” he said.
“Complexity within your enterprise creates a lot of cost. Managing your own infrastructure can get very expensive. It requires costly, specialized resources and creates a lot of hidden overheads.
“AI adds to this challenge creating unpredictable demand and usage patterns. And this is where Snowflake shines. We have tried to deliver the most efficient Ai and data platform out there. And we are a single platform for all of your workloads.”
While AI offers many benefits, when it comes to compliance, AI somewhat intensifies things, according to Ramaswamy. But, he added, Snowflake can help here, too.
In particular, he reiterated the dedicated features Snowflake’s built-in governance solution, Horizon, brings to bear by ensuring baked-in capabilities that focus on access, compliance, privacy, and security.
“We help you proactively identify ways you can monitor and improve your security posture. The key thing with the AI data cloud is that you not only get the platform but also the content, data, applications, models - the things you need to do your job effectively,” he said.
“All of this comes together to form the AI data cloud. We support all data types and leading architectural patterns… all kinds of compute needs and all personas on a single, solid enterprise-grade, data foundation. We delivered a platform that is unified, easy to use, and provides much better TCO. This isn't just talk. The era of enterprise AI is here.”
