What is Snowflake? Exploring the Database of the Year and Its Popularity
For the second year in a row, Snowflake has been named the Database of the Year by DB-Engines.
Over the past couple of years, it has climbed the popularity rankings, currently sitting at #11.
Snowflake is a cloud data platform designed for analytical, AI, and ML use cases. As a cloud-native solution, its architecture differs significantly from traditional databases like SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL.
Why is Snowflake so popular?
A decade ago, companies looking to conduct deep analysis had to invest in expensive hardware, complex software, and custom data transfer code. Hadoop and Cloudera were pioneers in this field. Snowflake, on the other hand, simplifies and builds upon these concepts. It began as a turnkey platform handling hardware and software components behind the scenes, allowing companies to focus on data. Snowflake has since evolved into what they call "the data cloud," adding features that support their mission to bring applications to the data, rather than the other way around.
Why choose Snowflake over its competitors?
One of Snowflake's main advantages is that it is multi-cloud. It's available on all major cloud platforms: Azure, AWS, and GCP. Companies that operate in multi-cloud environments can query their Snowflake data directly from any of these platforms. This advantage becomes even more significant with Snowflake's data sharing capabilities, or "Stable Edges."
A Stable Edge is data already in Snowflake, ready to be queried. For example, Salesforce and Snowflake reached an agreement in late 2022, allowing Salesforce data to be updated in Snowflake near-real-time. Salesforce customers can now directly query their data in Snowflake without needing to use an API. Snowflake's multi-cloud nature means that if a company wants to choose a single location for data sharing, they'll likely choose Snowflake. This is because selecting a platform-specific solution, like AWS Redshift, would exclude potential customers on Azure-only or GCP-only environments.
This competitive advantage is also apparent in how "hyperscalers" (AWS, Azure, GCP) often co-sell Snowflake, despite having competing products. For instance, AWS sales staff might pitch Snowflake in their environment instead of their own Redshift. Another example is Amazon's data sharing agreement with Snowflake, which enables Amazon marketplace vendors to query their data via a Snowflake Stable Edge.
In conclusion, Snowflake's popularity can be attributed to its simplified, turnkey approach to data analysis, its multi-cloud capabilities, and its innovative data sharing features. With growing recognition and continued development, Snowflake is poised to become an even more significant player in the world of cloud data platforms.
Contact Moser Consulting for more information.
