Snowflake is a cloud data warehouse built on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure and is a true SaaS offering. To reduce its reliance on AWS, Snowflake also utilizes cloud services from Microsoft and Google. However, AWS remains the primary provider of Snowflake, which could be concerning for investors who have seen Amazon use pricing power in its dominant business and consumer businesses to eliminate competition. Snowflake was initially created to eliminate the hassle of managing infrastructure while allowing for virtually infinite scalability of resources.
The company has recently announced its support for Google Cloud Platform (GCP), but AWS is still the main provider. Vendors soon realized that partnering was much more lucrative than competing, and the relationship between AWS and Snowflake has flourished. AWS solved this problem with the introduction of Redshift Spectrum, which allows you to query data that exists directly in S3, but it's not as easy as with Snowflake. In an exclusive email interview with SiliconAngle, Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman said that his company's partnership with AWS has matured and has become a great advantage for both parties, as both parties bring material value to each other and to their joint customers.
Instead, AWS Snowflake uses a Structured Query Language (SQL) database engine with an architecture specifically designed for the cloud. At the same time, they need ISVs like Snowflake to operate in their clouds, as it sells infrastructure services, expands customer options and evolves the ecosystem.Snowflake's cost of product revenue represented 94% of its total cost of sales. Your choice between the Snowflake data warehouse and the AWS Redshift data warehouse should be based entirely on the specific demands of your company, your resources and your funding. However, it seems that Redshift is much more established compared to Snowflake and would make the entire data transition much easier if you're already working with AWS.
Snowflake also offers a set of high-level security features including access to the site controlled by an IP, authentication of accounts and users using multifactor authentication (MFA), the security of controlled objects, the security of automatically encrypted data, and security validations that comply with several compliance laws.The Snowflake platform and its broad ecosystem of partners provide a basis for improving data governance. However, Snowflake doesn't have the same integration features, which can make it difficult to use with some of the tools mentioned above, such as Kinesis, Glue, Athens, etc. First of all, every penny that Snowflake spends on engineering, going to market and its ecosystem goes to improving its database for customers. Instead of marketing against those similarities, Snowflake continued to innovate and add multi-cloud support and data sharing features with strong governance and so-called data white-rooms.
