Snowflake made some subtle, but important, changes to its partner support model earlier this year and the benefits are definitely being realized by the ecosystem.
So says Dan Waters, Snowflake’s vice president of partner and alliances in EMEA, who sat down with Channel Pro for an interview at the firm’s annual Snowflake Summit in San Francisco last month.
Just over a year since former Salesforce channel leader Tyler Prince was announced as senior vice president of worldwide alliances and channels, the vision and tweaks being rolled out as part of that are starting to move from theory to reality.
“We've shifted programmatic support, to give our partners the ability to invest in proof of concepts, for instance, or to invest into driving innovation within customers and accelerating that time to value,” Waters said.
“We pivoted to that this year. That was announced at the Summit last year. So we were just literally a year into this new program. We’ve had great, great feedback. And, I think, it’s exactly what we needed to do. That's a good example of listening to what partners are telling us about what customers want and really unlocking the capability of our partner ecosystem to further accelerate customer success.”
Snowflake has many partners - more than 2,000 in EMEA and more than 10,000 globally - with different labels within its vast ecosystem. And while it is keen to expand, it doesn’t want to do so purely for number’s sake. Waters was keen to emphasize this point when we met with him in 2023 and it was a message he was sure to reiterate has not changed into 2024 and beyond.
“It’s about having the right partnerships and about having the right commitment to each other. It's that joint commitment and how you support each other, with a customer-first focus and what each party brings in terms of positioning from a customer perspective. That's absolutely critical and it is important to have a mix of capabilities and skill sets, especially as we get more all-encompassing as a platform,” Waters said.
“That's become even more relevant as we look at things like Cortex and AI and everything that we announced [at Summit] in terms of the development of Snowflake as a data AI platform, which requires different skills and capabilities from not only our SIs, but also our ISV partners, our data cloud product partners, and our technology partnerships and our cloud partnerships as well. I think it's a nice position to be in because there hasn't been a [big] shift. There doesn't need to be. It's just - if anything - becoming even more laser-focused on who those partners should be, and the joint commitment and bets that we're placing on each other.”
An important two-way street
Listening to partners is a key tool that Snowflake uses to ensure its finger remains on the pulse of what customers are saying, doing and need to do. That means really partnering in all senses of the word and ensuring a two-way dialogue.
“I think that’s really important in partnerships. It's not always going to be necessarily what you want to hear. But it’s that honesty and transparency that makes a great partnership,” Waters added.
Channel Pro’s interview with Waters also included the opportunity to chat to one such partner so we could hear directly from them about how they view working with Snowflake. The partner in question was Devoteam, a digital strategy consulting firm headquartered in France, but operational in more than 25 countries since it was founded more than a quarter of a century ago.
The official news that Devoteam was joining the Snowflake Partner Network was released in December 2023, but the conversations go back longer than that, according to Cyril Lehmann, vice president of Devoteam’s data group.
This firm is betting big on its union with Snowflake. It wants to become an elite-level regional systems integration (RSI) before the end of next year, as well as doubling both its EMEA revenue and workforce each year between now and 2026.
“Our job is to help customers to unlock the potential of the most innovative cloud technology and deliver sustainable business volume,” Lehmann said. “We love tech, we love partnering. We partner only with the most innovative technology or strategic offerings [when it comes to] cloud, data, AI, and cybersecurity transformation. When it comes to data and AI, for instance, it was evident for us to partner at the highest level with Snowflake.”
While investment and having a listening ear may be two key benefits to being part of the Snowflake Partner Network, another benefit is the reach and ability to partner with other partners, according to Lehmann.
“I think part of the success is also [the fact] it's not [just] partnering with Snowflake. It's also partnering with the ecosystem of Snowflake. I think it's what makes this kind of partnership very exciting,” he said.
“It’s not only about partnering. It's how you partner with the whole ecosystem because the ecosystem is deployed in the customer landscape. It's how to manage the best combination and leverage them to unlock potential.”
