Coming off of our Snowday event, we’ve unveiled a number of new product capabilities that expand what is possible in the Data Cloud. From helping businesses operate globally with improved replication efficiency, empowering developers with new functionality in Snowpark, and improving the security and governance of data through native object tagging, there is no shortage of exciting advancements coming to Snowflake.
DATA PROGRAMMABILITY
More cloud availability and improvements come to Snowpark
At Snowday 2021, we announced some of the latest updates for Snowflake’s Snowpark developer framework. Snowpark, currently in public preview, brings deeply integrated, DataFrame-style programming to the languages and functions developers like to use. Snowpark is designed for data engineers, data scientists, and developers—so they can code the same way but execute faster and more securely in a single platform. With the recent Snowpark API and Java UDF public preview for both Azure and Google Cloud Platform, Snowpark is now available across all three supported major cloud providers.
We’re also announcing a major expansion to our Java functions support: Table functions are now in public preview. Previously, only scalar functions were supported, which operate on each row in isolation and produce a single (possibly complex) result. Scalar functions are nice. They’re simple to write, they’re simple for Snowflake to scale out as part of a query, and they address a broad array of problems. But there are many things that cannot be done with scalar functions, including: returning multiple rows for each input row; maintaining state across multiple rows; and returning a single result for a group of rows. However, all of these are possible now with table functions.
Snowpark also provides an External Functions feature. This allows developers to invoke external APIs and remote services from within their Snowflake SQL queries and then blend responses into their query result. This happens in the same way as if it were internal Snowflake functions, which eliminates the need to export and reimport data. This feature significantly simplifies building data pipelines that require complex transformations or augmentations that would then require use of custom code or third-party services. Support for Request/Response Translators is now in public preview, which will further simplify the use of External Functions when talking to external APIs by eliminating the need for spinning up and maintaining an intermediary data translation layer. Learn more.
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
Know your data with business context
Object Tagging makes it easier to know and control your data by applying business context—such as tags that identify data objects as sensitive, as personally identifiable information (PII), or as belonging to a specific cost center. Customers can create their own library of custom tags and associate them to desired objects, including columns, tables, views, databases, and warehouses. Learn more.
Conditionally mask data based on other columns
Now in public preview, you can now create data masking policies based on multiple conditional columns, making access policies more flexible and data easier to manage. Conditional masking policies can be applied to multiple tables and views. Learn more.
PLATFORM OPTIMIZATION
More throughput and faster execution for interactive use cases
We’ve improved our elastic performance engine to support interactive use cases requiring speed and throughput for data applications and embedded analytics. Now available in public preview, this update includes dramatic increases in concurrency, throughput, and execution speed. Learn more.
Data replication efficiency improved by 55%
We increased the efficiency of data replication through improved parallelization—resulting in a 55% performance improvement. Because Snowflake customers only pay for what they use, this gain implies a 55% reduction in replication cost. Many Snowflake customers require high levels of availability and simplicity across regions and clouds. And this is only one of the ways that we’re improving cross-cloud continuity. Learn more.
SECURITY
Private Connectivity to Snowflake with Google Cloud Private Service Connect
Enabling private connectivity can be a critical first line of defense—especially for heavily regulated customers. Through native integrations with AWS PrivateLink and Azure Private Link, Snowflake makes it easy to configure private connections, regardless of cloud or region. And for customers using Google Cloud, we’re now happy to announce general availability of the Google Cloud Private Service Connect integration for Snowflake. This integration provides private connectivity to Snowflake by ensuring that access is through a private IP address. Snowflake appears as a resource in the customer’s network, but the traffic flows one way from the customer VPC to Snowflake VPC over the Google networking backbone. This setup significantly simplifies network configuration while providing secure and private communication. Read the blog to learn more.
GLOBAL EXPANSION
New Region Alert: Japan East (Tokyo) on Azure
Snowflake is expanding its availability to the Japan East (Tokyo) region on Azure. With this region, Snowflake now supports 298 global regions across three cloud platforms (Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Azure), including three regions for compliance with U.S. government regulations. View our full list of supported regions here.
ECOSYSTEM
Ecosystem Updates
Snowflake recently improved support for its SQL API, Kafka connector, and Python connector. Snowflake works with a wide array of industry-leading tools and technologies, enabling customers to access the platform through an extensive ecosystem of connectors, drivers, programming languages, and tools. Updates include the GA of loading protobuf data and JMX support with the Snowflake connector for Kafka, support for distributed results fetching for Snowflake connector for Python, a new required parameter for submitting multiple SQL statements in a single request, and support for parameters for formatting output for Snowflake SQL API.
SNOWFLAKE EXPERIENCE
File a support ticket in Snowflake
Customers can now file a support ticket right in Snowflake. There is no need to bookmark a URL or leave your work. You can create new cases, add additional details to existing cases, grant other users as watchers on a case, and escalate cases when necessary. This is only available in the new interface. Learn more.
SNOWFLAKE DATA MARKETPLACE
Snowflake customers can tap into Snowflake Data Marketplace to discover and access helpful third-party data and services from more than 200 providers (as of October 1, 2021) as well as market their own products across the Snowflake Data Cloud. Visit Snowflake Data Marketplace.
RECENTLY ADDED SNOWFLAKE DATA MARKETPLACE PROVIDERS
FINANCIAL SERVICES
Acuity
Acuity offers a powerful news analytics archive and real-time feed of data covering global equities, fx, and commodities. It provides sentiment and other data metrics on approximately 80,000 stocks, 25 commodities, 19 currencies, and 49 currency pairs, curated from the Dow Jones Newswire. Learn more.
Arabesque
Arabesque’s proprietary technology, Arabesque S-Ray®, allows investors to measure the sustainability of thousands of companies worldwide. The tool applies a quantitative and algorithmic approach to ESG data, empowering all stakeholders to make better decisions for a more sustainable future. Learn more.
RADiENT Analytics
RADiENT is an investment management and regulatory intelligence platform. It provides granular, high-quality data sets for all SEC filings, and calculated investment metrics. Customers can access portfolio holdings details for over 3,000+ fixed income funds, sourced from N-PORT filings. Learn more.
Stratifyd
Stratifyd is the only Experience Analytics Platform powered by Smart AI. Its Smart AI takes the burden of manual analytics off teams, proactively surfacing hidden experience signals and themes 24/7, so businesses can stay ahead of customers and the competition. Learn more.
HEALTHCARE AND LIFE SCIENCES
Invitae
Invitae Corporation is a leading medical genetics company whose mission is to bring comprehensive genetic information into mainstream medicine to improve healthcare for billions of people. Invitae’s goal is to aggregate the world’s genetic tests into a single service with higher quality, faster turnaround time, and lower prices. Learn more.
TRANSPORTATION
Flight BI
Flight BI is a business intelligence (BI) solution provider for the global aviation industry. It builds data warehouse products and web applications to help airlines, airports, aircraft manufacturers, and other travel-related businesses make data-driven strategic and operational decisions intuitively. Learn more.
Webfleet Solutions
Webfleet Solutions is one of the world’s leading telematics solution providers, dedicated to fleet management, vehicle telematics, and connected car services. Its main software-as-a-service solution WEBFLEET is used by businesses of all sizes to improve vehicle performance, save fuel, support drivers, and increase overall fleet efficiency. Webfleet Solutions serves the insurance, rental, and leasing industries; car importers; and companies that address the needs of businesses as well as consumers. Learn more.
MARKETING
Comscore
Comscore is a trusted partner for planning, transacting, and evaluating media across platforms. With a data footprint that combines digital, linear TV, over-the-top, and theatrical viewership intelligence with advanced audience insights, Comscore allows media buyers and sellers to quantify their multi-screen behavior and make business decisions with confidence. A proven leader in measuring digital and TV audiences and advertising at scale, Comscore is the industry’s emerging, third-party source for reliable and comprehensive cross-platform data activation and measurement. Learn more.
Dynata
Dynata has the industry’s highest-quality data, delivering the right mix of consumers, business professionals, and hard-to-reach audiences. They are vetted and verified—real people with real opinions—available and accessible for your research needs. This is the foundation of the Dynata Platform, a full suite of services for insights, activation, and measurement across the entire marketing journey. Learn more.
Eyeota
Eyeota is a data transformation company serving the global enterprise. Leading brands, publishers, and data companies leverage Eyeota to onboard, enrich, and activate their data assets across global markets and digital geographies. As the world’s largest data onboarding and audience intelligence firm, Eyeota brings a depth of experience in adapting data strategies to be consumer-friendly, addressable, and scalable in omnichannel environments. Learn more.
HG Insights
HG Insights is the global leader in technology intelligence. Every day, HG Insights uses advanced data science methodologies to process billions of unstructured digital documents to produce the world’s best technology installation information, IT spend, and contract intelligence. The world’s largest technology firms and fastest-growing companies achieve a tremendous advantage by using HG Insights to accelerate their sales, marketing, and strategy efforts. Learn more.
HubSpot
HubSpot is a leading customer relationship management (CRM) platform that provides software and support to help companies grow better. The platform includes marketing, sales, service, operations, and website management products that start free and scale to meet customer needs at any stage of growth. Learn more.
Iterable
Iterable is a cross-channel platform that powers unified customer experiences and empowers marketers to create, optimize, and measure every interaction taking place throughout the customer journey. With Iterable, brands create individualized marketing touchpoints that earn engagement, solidify trust, and galvanize loyal consumer-brand relationships. Learn more.
NCSolutions
NCSolutions enables brands to improve their advertising effectiveness on every platform, channel, and device. Its CPG research-based insights, collective wisdom, and proven techniques help brands target the right segments based on in-store purchase behaviors, optimize campaigns while in flight, and measure the resulting incremental sales. Learn more.
Near
Near is the world’s largest source of intelligence on people, places, and products, processing data from over 1.6 billion monthly users across 44 countries. The Near Platform powers data-driven marketing and enrichment offerings through a suite of SaaS products. The users of the platform can leverage audience, spatial, and retail, among other data in a privacy-led environment. Learn more.
Speedeon Data
Since 2008, Speedeon Data has been enabling leading brands to achieve remarkable success through data-driven insight, impactful customer engagement, and measurable omnichannel marketing deployment. Its robust data management platform enables clients to maximize return on marketing investment by utilizing the highest-quality lifestyle, life stage, and customer identity data in the development of innovative solutions, including data enhancement, advanced data segmentation and predictive modeling, digital, and other direct marketing deployment strategies. Learn more.
DEMOGRAPHICS
IdealSpot
IdealSpot has been providing high-resolution (block group, census tract) near-time geolocated market intelligence since 2014. Its unique location data platform is used to build actionable insights that solve real-world business challenges ranging from small-business retail site selection, regional franchise territory cutting, and even nationwide commercial real estate investment target selection. Learn more.
ENERGY
Element Data
Element Data provides enterprise-grade solutions by creating efficient, transparent, and trustworthy platforms where customers can access data sets via managed data marketplaces. It offers a one-stop shop for public data aiming to ease the process of data monetization while ensuring a smooth data shopping experience. Learn more.
ene’t GmbH
With its founding headquarters in Hückelhoven in the Lower Rhine region and another location in Torgau near Leipzig, ene’t GmbH is an independent digitalization and service expert for the German energy industry. Learn more.
COMMERCE
Coresignal
Coresignal is a leading provider of raw alternative data, scraped from public web sources. It provides 465 million professional profiles and 50 million company profiles, and updates 140+ million high-value people and company records monthly. The data, along with three years of historical records, can be used to build AI and ML models, forecast market trends, and generate high-quality B2B leads. Learn more.
Creditsafe
Creditsafe is a global leader in commercial intelligence, providing businesses across the world a deeper understanding of their landscape to make informed decisions that help their business grow. As the world’s most used provider of online business reports, it prides themselves on delivering the highest quality of data gathered from thousands of official registries and trusted sources. Learn more.
Shopgram
Shopgram is a market intelligence platform with insights based on more than 1 million Shopify ecommerce stores and all their products. It collects dozens of attributes for each company and tracks different themes and technologies that are relevant to ecommerce merchants. Learn more.
Forward-Looking Statements
This post contains express and implied forwarding-looking statements, including statements regarding (i) Snowflake’s business strategy, (ii) Snowflake’s products, services, and technology offerings, including those that are under development or not generally available, (iii) market growth, trends, and competitive considerations, and (iv) the integration, interoperability, and availability of Snowflake’s products 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 October 31, 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.
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