Snowflake Announces New Features to Bring Together the World’s Data in the Data Cloud

Rhea-AI Summary

Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) has launched new product innovations aimed at enhancing its Data Cloud capabilities during the Snowflake Summit. Key features include Snowpark for developers to use Java and Scala, Java UDFs for custom code integration, improved handling of unstructured data, and a new SQL API for easier application integration. Global governance innovations include PII classification and anonymized views. Additionally, platform optimizations promise better storage economics and interactive performance improvements. These advancements position Snowflake for greater market leadership.

Positive

• Launch of Snowpark for enhanced developer experience with Java and Scala.
• Introduction of Java UDFs allowing custom code integration.
• Capabilities to handle unstructured data for new revenue opportunities.
• New SQL API reduces complexity for application integration.
• Automated classification of PII enhancing data governance.
• Anonymized views to protect privacy while maintaining data value.
• Improved storage economics leading to reduced costs.
• Enhanced performance with up to 8x query duration improvements.

Negative

• None.

Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), the Data Cloud company, today unveiled its latest product innovations that redefine what’s possible in the Data Cloud. At its annual Snowflake Summit, the company announced innovations in data programmability, global data governance, and platform optimizations to empower organizations to bring more data together in the Data Cloud, achieving deeper value from data and powerful business insights.

Data programmability innovations:

• Snowpark. With initial support for Java and Scala, Snowflake’s developer experience, Snowpark, allows data engineers, data scientists, and developers to build using their preferred language and familiar programming concepts, and then execute these workloads directly within Snowflake. Currently in private preview, with public preview coming soon.
• Java UDFs. With Java user-defined-functions (UDFs), customers can bring their custom code and business logic to Snowflake for better performance and expanded use case capabilities, all while reducing management complexity. Currently in private preview, with public preview coming soon.
• Unstructured data. Snowflake is bringing accelerated time-to-value to unstructured data, enabling customers to store, govern, process, and share file data alongside their structured and semi-structured data and unlock new revenue opportunities. In private preview, with public preview coming soon.
• SQL API. The Snowflake SQL API enables custom and off-the-shelf applications to call Snowflake directly through a REST API, without the need for client-side drivers, thus reducing the complexity and administration overhead requirements. In public preview.

Snowflake customers like Sainsbury’s are already leveraging Snowflake’s data programmability capabilities. “Snowflake enables us with a flexible, scalable toolset and processing power to bring together granular data and build upon the data we already have,” Sainsbury’s Senior Data Viz and Automation Manager, Steven Henson-Tyers said. “With Snowflake’s Data Cloud, our data scientists have more access to the near real-time information needed to build and iterate on models more quickly and effectively.”

In addition to Snowflake's core innovations in this area, it continues to expand and deepen its partner ecosystem. The new Snowpark Accelerated Program provides partners who integrate with Snowpark with access to technical experts and additional exposure to Snowflake customers. Data science partners like Dataiku and DataRobot also continue to enhance their integrations with Snowflake. In addition, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched Snowflake integration with Amazon SageMaker Data Wrangler. Starting today, you can now use Snowflake as a data source in Amazon SageMaker Data Wrangler to easily prepare data in Snowflake for machine learning.

Global governance capabilities:

• Classification. Snowflake’s classification capability automatically detects personally identifiable information (PII) in a given table and leverages the tagging framework to annotate the data, allowing role-based policies to be used to control access to the data. Classification is in private preview.
• Anonymized views. This new capability can be used to protect privacy and identity in a dataset, while still retaining its analytical value. The private preview of anonymized views is expected to be released soon.

Platform optimizations:

• Improved Storage Economics. Recent changes to Snowflake’s storage representation of data have resulted in better compression, and reduced storage costs. This enhanced storage technology is available transparently, with no user action, no configuration changes, and no application or query changes. This is already rolled out to all Snowflake customers and will apply to newly written data.
• Improved Support for Interactive Experiences. The new set of updates released for high volume and low latency workload requirements can result in up to a 6x improvement on query throughput on a single compute cluster; and up to an 8x improvement in average query duration for those workloads. These enhancements are in private preview.
• Usage Dashboard. The new usage dashboard helps customers better understand usage and costs across the platform, making it easy to manage Snowflake accounts across the entire organization. The usage dashboard is in public preview.

“Snowflake’s unique architecture has not only redefined what’s possible with data in the Data Cloud, but it has given us a strong foundation to continue to build and innovate on,” Snowflake SVP of Product, Christian Kleinerman said. “This foundation powers Snowflake’s leadership across six key workloads with blazing performance, reduced operational complexity, and hardened security, and it also enables us to create a global experience across clouds and regions.”

Learn more about Snowflake’s newly announced product features and enhancements here. Hear from Snowflake executives, customers and partners in the Snowflake Summit keynotes, breakout sessions, and hands-on labs here.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains express and implied forwarding-looking statements, including statements regarding Snowflake’s business strategy, products, services, and technology offerings, including those that are under development, market growth, trends, and competitive considerations, and integration, interoperability, and availability with and on third-party platforms. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those described under the heading “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2021 that Snowflake has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In light of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. As a result, you should not rely on any forwarding-looking statements as predictions of future events.

About Snowflake

Snowflake enables every organization to mobilize their data with Snowflake's Data Cloud. Customers use the Data Cloud to unite siloed data, discover and securely share data, and execute diverse analytic workloads. Wherever data or users live, Snowflake delivers a single data experience that spans multiple clouds and geographies. Thousands of customers across many industries, including 187 of the 2020 Fortune 500 as of April 30, 2021, use Snowflake Data Cloud to power their businesses. Learn more at snowflake.com

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FAQ

What are the new features announced by Snowflake for SNOW?

Snowflake announced several new features including Snowpark, Java UDFs, improved handling of unstructured data, a SQL API, and advancements in global governance and platform optimizations.

How does Snowflake's new SQL API benefit users?

The new SQL API allows custom applications to directly call Snowflake via REST API, simplifying integration and reducing management overhead.

What improvements were made to data handling in Snowflake's latest update?

Snowflake introduced features like automated PII classification, anonymized views, and better storage economics, enhancing data governance and reducing costs.

When will the new features for Snowpark be available?

Snowpark is currently in private preview, with public preview expected to be available soon.

How does Snowflake's new storage technology affect customers?

Snowflake's improved storage technology provides better data compression and reduced storage costs with no user action required.