CUSTOMER STORIES
A Class Apart: University of Auckland Accelerates Insights with Snowflake Cortex Analyst
The University simplified its data infrastructure and dramatically improved operational efficiency by moving from Oracle to Snowflake.
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New ZealandStory highlights
- Simple and scalable: The AI Data Cloud provides a simple, scalable solution without compromising on security. For example, with its previous Oracle solution, cloning might take several days — but with Snowflake, the team can do it in near-real time.
- Democratizing data with AI: With tools like Cortex Analyst, users without deep technical knowledge can get answers by asking questions in natural language. An AI chatbot helps staff get the information they need quickly, allowing them to focus on their core work.
- Fostering innovation and talent: Thanks to its ease of use, the platform allows the University to be innovative in a self-sufficient way. It also provides opportunities for the next generation through an internship program where students gain hands-on experience, including with data engineering — and many are offered full-time positions afterward.
Video Transcript
Pamela Moss, Director of Planning: If you know how to use data and if data tells you a story, then universities are a good place to be because we have unlimited amounts of data.
Prof. Duncan McGillivray, Head of School, Faculty of Science: Right now, there have never been greater opportunities for a student in terms of using data and artificial intelligence. We're operating in so many spheres, research, we're about connections with industry, connections with government.
Indrajeet Singh, Associate Director, Data & Analytics Engineering: Data to University helps us to make our day-to-day decisions as well as our strategic decisions. We were using Oracle as our data warehouse platform. But as we were growing, that platform was not giving us the right opportunities that we wanted to have with our data. Snowflake stood out because it was simple to use and you can scale whenever you need it without compromising your data modeling or the security on the platform. Snowflake allows us to do the cloning within seconds, which might take several days on the old system.
Pamela Moss, Director of Planning: Working with Snowflake has been a great pleasure. It's a much more innovative environment, much more efficient in the operations.
Indrajeet Singh, Associate Director, Data & Analytics Engineering: When we were on the Oracle platform. If we have a data pipeline break, we will be working for a whole day to catch up. But with Snowflake, we can just resolve that within an hour.
Anybody should be able to use the technology in the same way. And Cortex Analyst is helping us bridge that gap. We do not have to worry about what level of technological knowledge. If you can ask the question in a natural language, there is an endless possibility.
Emily Luo, Data Engineer (Ex-Student and Intern): The future of data and AI is collaborative, combining the human insights with the machine intelligence to solve the real world problems.
Pamela Moss, Director of Planning: We have taken a number of students through an internship program that we run. Through that program, they've been offered full-time positions.
Emily Luo, Data Engineer (Ex-Student and Intern): I'm working on the AI chatbot. It's quite rewarding that I can support their decision-making.
Indrajeet Singh, Associate Director, Data & Analytics Engineering: We saw an opportunity in the bot, helping us to bridge the gap between the technical and the business users as well. Whatever questions they have, they can ask and get the answer and go back to their core work that they need to do every day, instead of spending their time trying to collate that information.
Prof. Duncan McGillivray, Head of School, Faculty of Science: There are many, many occasions where I've got interesting questions in my mind, and I don't know how to interrogate the data to find the answer. I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to do those initial inquiries to get the answers I need when I need them.
Pamela Moss, Director of Planning: Snowflake has allowed us to be innovative in a largely self-sufficient way, knowing that the support sits there in the background when we need it.
Emily Luo, Data Engineer (Ex-Student and Intern): I'm just quite excited about how AI is just changing the way people connecting or interacting with data. It's just the beginning!
Indrajeet Singh, Associate Director, Data & Analytics Engineering: Our experience with Snowflake has been transformational. I'm really excited for what it will allow us to do in the future.
