After a roaring week at the 2024 Snowflake Data Cloud Summit, the conference has come to an end.
Snowflake unveiled a raft of new product and service announcements across the week, including an exciting partnership extension with Nvidia.
As with many events over the last few months, generative AI featured heavily, with Snowflake banging the drum on its latest AI-supported products and platform features.
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There's been a real buzz in San Francisco today with the Data Cloud Summit kicking off. We've still got a few hours until the opening keynote begins, but you can check out all of our predictions for the week ahead and potential talking points.
• Four things to look out for at the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit 2024
We're just a few hours away from the opening keynote and the expo hall is starting to get busy - you can hear the chatter of people networking and talking about opportunities from the press lounge. All very exciting!
Before the keynote starts, we're in an exclusive press roundtable with Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy and Benoit Dageville, co-founder and president of product. Some of it is under embargo but we'll be sure to share all the details as soon as we can...
Some very interesting questions being asked during this Q&A. One thing we can tell you is that AI has already been mentioned a few times!
Partners and effective partnerships are also a hot topic and one we expect to dominate during the keynotes and sessions this week.
ITPro took a little wander out to the expo earlier today. We didn't have much time but hope to get back out there and meet some partners over the next few days.
Just over an hour to go until the opening keynote so let's rewind back a few months and remind ourselves of when Ramaswamy got the call (or, rather, when the news of his appointment was made public).
It was February 28 this year when Snowflake confirmed that former CEO Frank Slootman was retiring and that Ramaswamy (who joined the business with the Neeva acquisition back in May 2023) would be taking the helm, moving up from his role of SVP of AI.
“In the last 12 years, Frank and the entire team have established Snowflake as the leading cloud data platform that is providing enterprises with the secure, scalable and cost effective data foundation and cutting-edge AI building blocks they need to build for the future,” Ramaswamy said at the time.
“I am honored to have been chosen to lead the company into this next chapter of growth. We have an enormous opportunity ahead to help all customers leverage AI to deliver massive business value. My focus will be on accelerating our ability to bring innovation to our customers and partners.”
That was the promise so we're very much looking forward to the delivery and the future vision, which we hope to hear more about later today.
Nearly time folks! The hall for the opening keynote session is filling up nicely...
"Making AI accessible to everyone in your organization" claims the opening video.
"Welcome to the largest gathering of AI and data professionals in the world," is r Ramaswamy's opening statement.
He added we have entry level analysts to CEOs in attendance and said they are the epicenter of all things happening here and in the data world.
"The Snowflake Data Cloud platform has exploded over the last 10 years..." Ramaswamy' added.
"We have thousands of customers sharing data every day. We're serving five billion queries every single day. That is almost the scale of Google searches that happen on the planet."
Ramaswamy gave thanks to customers "who trust us with their data and their business" and also ensured the gratitude extended to partners and Snowflakes employees, too.
"I’ve been in this role three months. In some respects it feels like three years. I’ve been a big fan of Snowflake for many years before that," he said.
He then took a few steps back to talk about his entry into the industry and Snowflake. Ramaswamy was very passionate about drumming but his parents told him “no” so he decided to get a PhD in databases, as disgruntled drummers often do.
More than 200 partners are here today and we have a feeling there will be a big partnership announcement/talk incoming soon.
"The AI data cloud is lighting up every corner of the enterprise and we're just getting started," Ramaswamy stressed.
"You want a simple and efficient way to deploy the right engine for the right job... And know [your data is] not owned by anyone but you. That is why I am thrlled to announce the Polaris Catalog," he added to a round of applause from the audience.
Ai is a big talking point and one that has come up with every customer Ramaswamy has met in his first three months in the lead role.
"For the first time, everyone in the organization can talk to their data in fluid, natural language," he said.
"But, here’s the issue. The bar for AI use in enterprise is much higher than in consumer AI. Consumer AI is not ready for business use."
Ramaswamy said: "Every rational business lead should ask this question [about the cost of AI]. Before stressing how businesses simply can't afford to be writing blank cheques when it comes to AI.
"We are pioneering the era of enteprise AI. It is easy. It is efficient. It is trusted."
Ramaswamy talked up the world-class AI team working at Snowflake.
"When things go from the chosen few to the many, [that is when things take off]," he said.
"The next 10 years are going to drive so much innovation it will dwarf what has been donw in the last 20 or 30 years," adding that Snowflake cannot do this alone, however. Indeed, he said " It takes a village and that is why we have partnerships."
One of those key partnerships is with Nvidia and Ramaswamy is joined on stage (via video conference rather than IRL) by the firm's CEO Jensen Huang.
"No company is more synonymous with AI than Nvidia," Ramaswamy said, adding that the two companies together were moving AI from aspirational theory to reality.
"The AI infrastructure of the world is really built here," Jensen said, alluding to the reason he couldn't be at the Summit in person.
"I’m here to unite the ecosystem so we can focus on creating the infrastructure for the new industrial revolution.”
The partnership announcement between the two firms will enable "customers and partners can harness to build customized AI data applications in Snowflake, powered by NVIDIA AI," according to the official press release.
When it comes to AI you can either be first to market, or you can be second and have something that really makes an impact, Jensen said, likely alluding to those who are jumping on the bandwagon by simply rebranding existing solutions or rushing.
Talking about the enhanced Nvidia Snowflake collaboration, in response to a question from Ramaswamy asking what excites him most about the announcement, Jensen added: “This is a profound announcement in a couple of different ways. NeMo Retriever is a semantic query library. It does the embedding of your data. The most important asset of a company is its priority data. And that sits on Snowflake."
He added: “We can connect extremely large and propriety data with your ability to chat with it and connect it to bunch of other microservices."
"For the very first time we are bring HPC and accelerated GenAI computing to the data," he said, before saying that this news was a really big deal for all concerned.
So much potential, possibilities and opportunities on the horizon, according both leaders.
Jensen concluded "The announcement today is really game changing. I am so happy we did it and that Snowflake drove this innovation."
While Ramaswamy said: "It is incredible to have partners like Nvidia and Jensen [as we move forward on this AI journey."
Before leaving the stage Ramaswamy reiterated that we are in "the enterprise era of AI."
Four chief data officers are now on the stage for a real-world discussion moderated by Denise Persson, chief marketing officer at Snowflake.
The panelists are:
- Anu Jain, head of data and technology, JP Morgan Chase.
- Caitlin Halferty, chief global data officer, Ericsson
- Shahran Haider, deputy CDO, NYC Health + Hospitals
- Thomas Davey, CDO, Booking.com
“This is an exciting time for us all in the data space,” Jain said, before saying the key traits CDOs should have are being curious and embracing continuous learning.
Haider added: "You can never keep up with all the data demands of the organization, so in some respects don’t even try!"
But he stressed that it was really about staying true to business priorities, which for NYC Health + Hospitals is all about delivering the best patient care, regardless of who the patient is."
Booking.com has always been at the leading edge when it comes to using data, according to Davey. But he did warn that "every data decision comes with opportunities but also risks."
Ericsson's Halferty said: “We are very fortunate to operate in a very data-rich environment… every day we are thinking about how can we design data systems that will enable us to accelerate and derisk.. How can we provide the uninterrupted , unlimited connectivity we have all become accustomed to."
She added it was also important to attract - and retain - the best talent for the firm to achieve its mission.
The leaders are now talking about where they are on their AI journey.
"We heavily utilize ML, AI and now GenAI to make sure we put the right products and services in front of the right customer at the right time," Booking.com's Davey said.
"We've really built a platform where we lower the barrier to entry in a very safe and compliant way. We think the new GenAI capablities are just another tool in that tool box."
As an example, he said it has been almost a year since the company released its AI trip planner in the US.
"Our strategy is very foundational to what we do," Davey added. "And we think this is what is really going to drive that connected and personalized experience."
JP Morgan Chase's Jain said that her firm's previous use of AI had been largely focused on cost reduction but that is shifting to revenue generation.
She added that, at some point, the firm can imagine using AI to rethink certain workflows.
"Your AI journey can not be complete without thinking about the talent," Jain said. "We have over 2,000 professional who are experts in data science as well as AI. We have a centre of excellence focused on building world-class AI solutions."
The discussion is coming to a close and the common themes seem to be:
- Being curious and open to exploration but not completely ignorant of risk
- Staying in your lane/true to the business you are in
- Thinking about security and compliance
- Prioritizing and ensuring the work being done is mapped to business priorities
And that's a wrap for the opening keynote of day one of Snowflake Summit 2024. We hope you found it insightful. Come back tomorrow for all the info from the day two keynote session.
As for me, I'm off to explore what's inside this large Snowflake truck parked outside the Moscone Center!
The opening keynote yesterday was action-packed, to say the least. Here’s a brief recap while we’re waiting for the morning session to begin.
• Nvidia CEO and founder Jensen Huang tuned in via video call to discuss all the latest partnership news between the two firms. Nvidia and Snowflake have long-standing ties, and the companies are collaborating extensively on enabling AI innovation.
• Four chief data officers from partner organizations took to the stage for a panel discussion exploring practical examples of AI innovation in the real world - Snowflake is guiding them throughout the process, from early development to deployment.
AI, naturally, featured heavily yesterday. It's been a common theme at a host of major industry events so far in 2024, and it's clear this will continue for the rest of the year.
Snowflake has been making moves in this regard, and has been highly vocal about positioning itself as the go-to provider to enterprises seeking to adopt generative AI and maximize the use of their data.
This has been very successful so far for the company. Snowflake recorded impressive growth in its recent earnings call, which Ramaswamy attributed to surging enterprise interest in AI.
While we're waiting for the day-two keynote to begin, why not catch up on all our recent Snowflake coverage?
• Snowflake’s AI strategy is cooking up a storm with enterprise customers
• Snowflake unveils Arctic, an enterprise-grade LLM
Just moments to go now until day two's keynote starts.
This is how Snowflake is billing the session:
"Industry-leading companies leverage the Snowflake AI Data Cloud to transform their businesses through AI innovation. Join Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy, Co-Founder and President of Product Benoit Dageville, and EVP of Product Christian Kleinerman as they unveil the latest innovations in Snowflake’s unified platform that make it easy to break down silos, develop and distribute modern apps, and securely empower everyone with AI. You’ll see live demos from Snowflake’s engineering and product teams, and hear from some of the best-known global organizations on how they are shaping industries with the Snowflake AI Data Cloud."
Looks like a packed agenda with a great line up of speakers.
Video playing showcasing how different customers are making use of Snowflake to help drive their businesses forward.
Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy now on stage, saying he left the keynote yesterday feeling super excited.
"Welcome to day two of Snowflake Summit," he said.
"We have an action-packed day ahead of us. Yesterday we talked about the enterprise era of AI and our vision. Today we are going to hear all about the platform."
And he promised there would be many announcements...
Ramaswamy is talking about the first time he met the founders and how the meeting was meant to be an hour long but ended up being three hours long.
Before Ramaswamy leaves the stage he reiterates that there is a reason Snowflake is one product and one engine rather than many. It's all about simplicity, he said.
Ramaswamy is now joined on stage by Snowflake co-founder and president of product Benoit Dageville. Really sweet moment where the two of them hug - you can tell there is genuine respect and admiration here.
Dageville stared by saying that whether the attendees were long-standing customers [and partners] or just starting on their journey with Snowflake: “I am so so grateful that you are here today.“
“Today I would like to get geeky with you and share why I believe Snowflake architecture is really the best one for all your AI applications," he added.
Dageville talks about the core tenets the Snowflake plaftorm is built on, particularly as we move through this new era of AI.
"Enterprise AI is only as good as the data foundation it is built on," he said. "We are talking about AI for the enterprise not for planning your next vacation."
Getting a sense we will be playing word bingo and 'simple' and 'simplicity' will come up quite a great deal today and rest of the week. But, in an increasingly complex world, this is what business and IT decision makers absolutely need.
“As with everything with Snowflake we want to combine maximum efficiency with extreme simplicity," Dageville said.
“What is the fun of AI without the ability to share it? Snowflake is really the only platform where you can share data, models and AI apps across clouds and regions,” he added.
And the power of AI and data can be made available to any person or department, he said.
Dageville concluded his part of the keynote with a rallying call to customers and partners by saying: "I am excited about what we are building. I am even more excited about what you will build. And with Snowflake the technology is really no longer the limit. Your imagination is. So please go unleash the power of the Data Cloud to build amazing apps. Thank you all and enjoy the rest of the week with us."
Snowflake executive vice president of product Christian Kleinerman is now on stage.
"We love the opportunity to be together and we all can learn from one another," he starts by saying.
He says he's going to focus on three key areas in terms of talking points:
- Strengthening your data foundation
- Applications
- AI
It's about data on your terms, according to Kleinerman.
Some cool stats now.
Kleinerman announces Serverless Flex Tasks.
[At Summit five years ago, we said] with Snowflake we give you flexibility. Things have evolved [since then. There is the merging of lake houses, data meshing. We want to give you choice and fit the architecture you have in mind. This is where open file and open table formats fit in," Kleinerman said, before adding that Icerberg tables are generally available in all clouds today.
Kleinerman now joined on stage by Arun Ulagaratchagan, corporate vice president of Azure Data at Microsoft. The pair talk about the fact they recently shared the stage at the Microsoft Build conference to talk about how they are taking their partnerhsip to the next level.
So many announcements incoming it’s hard to keep up. Four key ones are:
- Universal search
- Internal marketplace
- Uniform listing locators
- AI object descriptions
"Everywhere we see friction we just go and take it out as much as we can," Kleinerman says.
Kleinerman now talking about Snowflake Trust Center…
“Please go look at Trust Center and at least understand where you are and take action,” he said. “We are very excited that Trust Center is also entering the process to be generally available soon!”
Snowflake Performance Index is now the topic, which Kleinerman says, helps applications get faster and, in turn, can generate cost savings or efficiencies.
“All in all, we help you have a strong data foundation,” Kleinerman says.
Dietmar Mauersberger, vice president of data, Siemens AG, Siemens is now the lead speaker.
He says there is a powerful saying in the business that translates to: “If Siemens only knew what Siemens knows.”
“It’s about making the implicit knowledge really explicit and accessible to everyone. We have accumulated a lot of knowledge,” Mauersberger added.
“2024 is a turning point as the physical and digital worlds are merging.”
Mauersberger says the next revolution is digitalisation.
“We are transforming the everyday for everyone,” Mauersberger said, before talking about Siemens’ journey and how it looked to big tech companies to help forge a path forward.
“Working with Snowflake actually gave us the confidence [to do this],” he said.
“We stopped this analysis paralysis and just did it. We stuck our neck out, convinced that our team and the team of Snowflak would actually pull this through.”
Some very interesting stats from the Siemens and Snowflake Data Cloud collaboration.
"We completed the migration without any additional budget... That's just the beginning our data appetite is actually growing," Mauersberger said.
"Snowflake is really at the heart of our transformation."
Mauersberger added that at the beginning of Siemens' Gen AI journey it looked at more than 450 use cases. But that it needed to ensure viability and usefulness beyond poem creation.
"Today we are closer than ever to truly know what Siemens knows," Mauersberger concluded.
We’re now in demo mode! Jeff Hollan, director of product, Snowpark and Developer Platform at Snowflake has taken to the stage to show things in action.
“If you can dream it you can build it on Snowflake,” he concluded.
Kleinerman is now talking about simplifying DevOps.
Snowflake Notebooks are now in public preview in all cloud, according to Kleinerman. In addition to the Container runtimes and Snowflake co-pilot, which Kleinerman says they will continue to evolve and make even better.
"The features store helps you with both training and inference. All in all, we want you to be able to do the entire lifecycle of ML in Snowflake without copying data out," Kleinerman added.
Kleinerman is giving a nod to the many partners using Cortex AI.
He says Cortex AI has three distinct layers:
- Models
- Chat
- Studio
Demo time again with Cortex AI running tasks super quickly, as shown by Amanda Kelly, director of product at Snowflake.
She got the proof of concept up and running with just a few lines of code.
Kelly says this was achieved at one tenth of the cost. "Who doesn't love saving money," she said.
Kleinerman now talking about how chat is the thing everyone is talking about/wants.
"[Chat is] one of the killer applications of AI for us in the data world. How do I expand access to all my business users? How do I build apps?" he said.
"I am extremely delighted to introduce to you today Cortex Analyst. It will make it trivial for you to create a chatbot."
Kleinerman then announced Cortex Search.
"Cortex search is exactly that… It very soon in public preview," he said.
"Our goal is to simplify the process of building a chat bot. In true Snowflake fashion we have extracted... and we have simplified until we can simplify no more. We have made it so easy we think anyone can build a chatbot."
Kleinerman then repeated the fact Snowflake has made it so easy that anyone can create a chatbot before announcing someone random from the audience would now be coming onto the stage to create a chatbot in front of us all!
"The possibilities are enormous... Creating applications and experiences for all sorts of roles who have not been thinking about data as the north star," Kleinerman added.
"We're incredibly excited to help you lead your organizations in this era of enterprise AI and continue to find ways to get moe value and isight out of your datas," Kleinerman said.
"We will continue our relentless pace of innovation. I hope all of you walk out of here inspired but also excited about what you can do."
That's a wrap on day two's keynote. We'll be back tomorrow to live blog the day three keynote.
Leading today's session we have Christian Kleinerman, EVP for product at Snowflake.
Christian, along with a host of Snowflake leaders, will be guiding us through all the latest updates from the company's extensive partner network, which has grown rapidly in recent years.
The session will explore how partners can harness some of the latest Snowflake platform features to accelerate AI and app development, and supercharge growth for the year ahead.
It's been a busy few days in San Francisco. Outside of the keynote coverage, IT Pro has been spending time interviewing Snowflake executives, customers and partners.
We've taken in and digested a lot of information and can't wait to publish articles covering a range of topics and discussion areas.
For those wondering what was in the Snowflake data truck parked outside the Moscone Center (you may recall I mentioned it at the end of the day one keynote live blog)...
Turns out it was a mobile meeting room! Alas, I didn't get to go in it as people were having meetings in it each time I attempted to visit. Oh well.
Next to the truck, though, was this very interesting sign.
For everyone who checks in (and has their badge scanned) at the Snowflake Snowmobile (the official name for the truck), the firm will donate $5 to the World Wildlife Foundation - up to a maximum of $75,000.
What a great idea and a worthy cause. I do hope it hits that ceiling donation to help save the bears. Polar bears could be completely extinct by 2100 if action - which requires time and money - isn't taken.
More than 200 partners are believed to be in attendance at this year's Summit and the overall attendee count is expected to be around 20,000. Although important to note the latter number may be a mix of in person and online attendees, so we're hoping to get a final number post-event.
In the run up to this week's event, Snowflake went big on partnering marketing as to why they should attend. Here's the sell by the numbers:
We hope you have enjoyed our live coverage and we look forward to you joining us at our next live blog. Thanks for reading!
