Ravi Kuppusamy - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO and Founder at BAssure Solutions
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Useful ETL provisions, continually evolving, and high availability
Pros and Cons
  • "Snowflake has a variety of other ETL provisions that they provide. You can use your own ETL pipeline. Additionally, they provide adapters, and they are always evolving, it is a well-developed solution."
  • "Snowflake has to build more capabilities because they have only built very few adapters, but they're growing and they're building. They should provide provisions to collect ETL pipeline capabilities, reduce developer work, and make more rapid application development, rather than some customizations. There are very few options, but they are building. I hope they will build ETL rapid application development provisions with more variety."

What is our primary use case?

Snowflake is a real-time and cloud-based complete ETL tool. You can receive the beta from various sources from Amazon. You can run your reports and do analysis in  Snowflake. Informatica and Tableau should have done this. Snowflake is a modern version of Informatica which is 100 percent in the cloud.

What is most valuable?

Snowflake has a variety of other ETL provisions that they provide. You can use your own ETL pipeline. Additionally, they provide adapters, and they are always evolving, it is a well-developed solution.

What needs improvement?

Snowflake has to build more capabilities because they have only built very few adapters, but they're growing and they're building. They should provide provisions to collect ETL pipeline capabilities, reduce developer work, and make more rapid application development, rather than some customizations. There are very few options, but they are building. I hope they will build ETL rapid application development provisions with more variety.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Snowflake for approximately eight months.

Buyer's Guide
Snowflake
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Snowflake. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Snowflake is highly stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Snowflake is a cloud solution that provides great scalability. However, I am not sure if it is cost-effective.

We have approximately 30 engineers using this solution. We have plans to scale our usage in the future. This is going to be a futuristic solution.

How are customer service and support?

We have not had any problems with the technical support.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Snowflake is straightforward. To set up the ETL pipeline, pull the data, and then generate the reports takes approximately two hours, end to end.

What about the implementation team?

I did the implementation in-house. We have a three-member team that does the maintenance of Snowflake. However, the amount of people needed depends on the size of the pipeline.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Snowflake licensing is more flexible and it is cheaper than other solutions. I can use it for only 10 days for MVP, or three years, and for flexible models. I can scale up, or down, and the pricing is based on the volume and duration. There are many licensing permutation combinations available.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Snowflake a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Anirban Bhattacharya - PeerSpot reviewer
Practice Head, Data & Analytics at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5
Exceptionally good technology that addresses data warehousing challenges and is built and designed in a good way
Pros and Cons
  • "The way it is built and designed is valuable. The way the shared model is built and the way it exploits the power of the cloud is very good. Certain features related to administration and management, akin to Oracle Flashback and all that, are very important for modern-day administration and management. It is also good in terms of managing and improving performance, indexing, and partitioning. It is sort of completely automated. Everything is essentially under the hood, and the engine takes care of it all. As a data warehouse on the cloud, Snowflake stands strong on its ground even though each of the cloud providers has its own data warehouse, such as Redshift for AWS or Synapse for Azure."
  • "There are three things that came to my notice. I am not very sure whether they have already done it. The first one is very specific to the virtual data warehouse. Snowflake might want to offer industry-specific models for the data warehouse. Snowflake is a very strong product with credit. For a typical retail industry, such as the pharma industry, if it can get into the functional space as well, it will be a big shot in their arm. The second thing is related to the migration from other data warehouses to Snowflake. They can make the migration a little bit more seamless and easy. It should be compatible, well-structured, and well-governed. Many enterprises have huge impetus and urgency to move to Snowflake from their existing data warehouse, so, naturally, this is an area that is critical. The third thing is related to the capability of dealing with relational and dimensional structures. It is not that friendly with relational structures. Snowflake is more friendly with the dimensional structure or the data masks, which is characteristic of a Kimball model. It is very difficult to be savvy and friendly with both structures because these structures are different and address different kinds of needs. One is manipulation-heavy, and the other one is read-heavy or analysis-heavy. One is for heavy or frequent changes and amendments, and the other one is for frequent reads. One is flat, and the other one is distributed. There are fundamental differences between these two structures. If I were to consider Snowflake as a silver bullet, it should be equally savvy on both ends, which I don't think is the case. Maybe the product has grown and scaled up from where it was."

What is our primary use case?

It is used in my company as well as in my client's company. We are a system integrator, so naturally, we need to have the centers of excellence and competencies in Snowflake.

What is most valuable?

The way it is built and designed is valuable. The way the shared model is built and the way it exploits the power of the cloud is very good. Certain features related to administration and management, akin to Oracle Flashback and all that, are very important for modern-day administration and management.

It is also good in terms of managing and improving performance, indexing, and partitioning. It is sort of completely automated. Everything is essentially under the hood, and the engine takes care of it all. As a data warehouse on the cloud, Snowflake stands strong on its ground even though each of the cloud providers has its own data warehouse, such as Redshift for AWS or Synapse for Azure.

What needs improvement?

There are three things that came to my notice. I am not very sure whether they have already done it. The first one is very specific to the virtual data warehouse. Snowflake might want to offer industry-specific models for the data warehouse. Snowflake is a very strong product with credit. For a typical retail industry, such as the pharma industry, if it can get into the functional space as well, it will be a big shot in their arm.

The second thing is related to the migration from other data warehouses to Snowflake. They can make the migration a little bit more seamless and easy. It should be compatible, well-structured, and well-governed. Many enterprises have huge impetus and urgency to move to Snowflake from their existing data warehouse, so, naturally, this is an area that is critical.

The third thing is related to the capability of dealing with relational and dimensional structures. It is not that friendly with relational structures. Snowflake is more friendly with the dimensional structure or the data masks, which is characteristic of a Kimball model. It is very difficult to be savvy and friendly with both structures because these structures are different and address different kinds of needs. One is manipulation-heavy, and the other one is read-heavy or analysis-heavy. One is for heavy or frequent changes and amendments, and the other one is for frequent reads. One is flat, and the other one is distributed. There are fundamental differences between these two structures. If I were to consider Snowflake as a silver bullet, it should be equally savvy on both ends, which I don't think is the case. Maybe the product has grown and scaled up from where it was.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for close to three years. I kept a tab on Snowflake and its progress since it came into the market.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Personally, I have worked extensively with Oracle, SQL Server, and Teradata. SQL Server has the Fast Track Data Warehouse (FTDW) appliance. Oracle has both the database and the appliance. I haven't worked on Parallel Data Warehouse, which is a big one offered by Oracle. Teradata is an appliance in itself. There is also Metadata. I haven't worked on DB2. 

All of these had their own lacunae. Data warehouses had their own problems. There were failures, challenges, and difficulties in adoption, and all of these have been addressed by Snowflake a big way. It has tried to marry the best of both worlds in terms of turnaround time, scalability, adoption, and seamlessness.

I hail from a classical data warehouse background. Snowflake has been kind of a silver bullet. It is trying to meet the best of both worlds. I wish I could do much more on Snowflake, but I'm tied up with many other things, which is why I'm not able to concentrate that much, but it is an exceptionally good technology.

How was the initial setup?

Its initial setup is very simple, which is its plus point. It is not at all a problem. You only need to understand a bit of the cloud ecosystem. When Snowflake is on Azure or AWS, you need to understand

  • What exactly is happening?
  • How these two are handshaking with each other?
  • What part Snowflake is playing?
  • How Azure or AWS is complementing it?

If these things are clear, the rest shouldn't be a problem.

What other advice do I have?

This could be something that might be debated upon, but Snowflake has two parts to it. One is the data warehouse itself, and the other one is the cloud. It is important to know about the cloud in terms of:

  • How a cloud functions?
  • How a cloud orchestrates through its services, domains, invocation of services, and other things?
  • How a cloud is laid out?

For example, let's take AWS. If AWS is invoking Lambda or something else, how will S3 come into the picture? Is there a role of DynamoDB? If you're using DynamoDB, how would you use it in the Snowflake landscape? So, cloud nuances are involved when we speak of Snowflake, and there is no doubt about that, but a more important area on which Snowflake consultants need to focus on is the core data warehousing and BI principles. This is where I feel the genesis of Snowflake has happened. It is the data warehouse on the cloud, and it addresses the challenges that on-prem databases had in the past, such as scalability, turnaround times, reusability, adoption, and cost, but the genesis, principles, and tenets of data warehousing are still sacrosanct and hold good. Therefore, you need the knowledge or background of what a data warehouse is expected to be, be it any school of thought such as Inmon school, a Kimball school, or a mix. You should know:

  • Data warehouse as a discipline.
  • The reason why it was born.
  • The expectations out of it in the past.
  • The current expectations.
  • What being on the cloud would solve?

These things on the data warehouse side need to be crystal clear. The cloud part is important, but it is of lesser essence than the data warehouse part. That's what I see, personally, and I guess that's the way the Snowflake founders have built the product.

As a data warehouse, I would rate Snowflake an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: reseller
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Snowflake
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Snowflake. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Biraja Mishra - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Principal Consultant at Genpact - Headstrong
MSP
Excellent support, good data loading speed, and built-in data security and compliance features
Pros and Cons
  • "The speed of data loading and being able to quickly create the environment are most valuable."
  • "If they could bring in some tools for data integration, it would be really great."

What is our primary use case?

We are silver or gold partners. The main use case is that we are building a data lake. We are creating a couple of downstream applications as well that will be used by data scientists. So, we will have a single data lake that will be used across the organization by different business domain users. The data is multi-source. We have data from SAP, JDE, and some Excel files.

What is most valuable?

The speed of data loading and being able to quickly create the environment are most valuable. 

For data, it provides built-in security and compliance with different standards, such as SOC 2, ISO, etc. So, we don't have to do a separate audit for compliance.

What needs improvement?

There are some gray areas. For example, there is no clarity on where the data sits exactly. That is their proprietary information, and they are not sharing those details. 

Its price should be improved. On the cost-side, it is more expensive than others.

If they could bring in some tools for data integration, it would be really great.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for almost two and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is pretty stable. Its stability is excellent.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. As of now, there are 500 users, but slowly, we are planning to roll out to multiple regions. It is currently in Europe, and we will be rolling it out to the APAC and USA regions. By the year-end, there will be more than 1,000 users.

How are customer service and support?

They're perfect. They're excellent. It could be because we are partners.

How was the initial setup?

It is straightforward. It is not that complex.

What about the implementation team?

Our own team deploys it for customers, but the initial configuration is done only by the Snowflake team because that is their area. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I have worked with multiple clouds, and cost-wise, it is a bit costlier than others, such as Redshift. Its price should be reduced.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate it an eight out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Antonio Gouveia - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Intelligence Analyst at Clarivate Analytics
Real User
Data storage and processing solution that facilitates the building of connectors between different data sources
Pros and Cons
  • "My company wanted to have all our data in one single place and this what we use Snowflake for. Snowflake also allows us to build connectors to different data sources."
  • "This solution could be improved by offering machine learning apps."

What is our primary use case?

My company wanted to have all our data in one single place and this what we use Snowflake for. Snowflake also allows us to build connectors to different data sources. The ultimate goal is to provide reporting and analytics to all departments in the company.

What needs improvement?

This solution could be improved by offering machine learning apps. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have used this solution for one year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a stable solution. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This is a scalable solution. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before Snowflake, we used Azure.

What about the implementation team?

I worked with a Microsoft partner to set up the entire thing. This took three months. 

What was our ROI?

We have not yet experienced ROI. 

What other advice do I have?

Overall, this is a helpful tool with a friendly interface. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user1251369 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal IT Technologist- BI Platform Architect at Medtronic
Real User
Data storage and analytics solution that offers value to our business through insights and its clone copy feature
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the clone copy."
  • "In a future release we would like to have a link which would allow us to connect to an external database and create certain views in your own database. This is because it is becoming hard for us to compare the data between multiple sources."

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the clone copy.

What needs improvement?

In a future release we would like to have a link which would allow us to connect to an external database and create certain views in your own database. This is because it is becoming hard for us to compare the data between multiple sources.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a stable solution. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This is a scalable solution. 

How are customer service and support?

The technical support of Snowflake is good. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI when using Snowflake based on the insights we get.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend the SaaS version for their organization. It is not complicated to use. Establishing a private link with current cloud services has been challenging so I would recommend having some kind of a block.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Manager at SSM VIT Global Solutions
Real User
It can exchange data with downstream systems and other vendor partners as well
Pros and Cons
  • "I like Snowflake's data exchange capabilities. It can exchange data with downstream systems and other vendor partners as well."
  • "There are some challenges with loading unstructured data and integrating some message queues or brokers. In one project, we had a problem connecting to one of the message queues and we had to take a different route altogether on Microsoft Azure."

What is our primary use case?

My current client is migrating from an on-premise data warehouse to the cloud, and they need to consolidate the data lake. I'm using Snowflake to develop the data lake and build data bots for certain functionalities. I've also used Snowflake to aggregate and clean data for my client's analytics.

What is most valuable?

I like Snowflake's data exchange capabilities. It can exchange data with downstream systems and other vendor partners as well.

What needs improvement?

There are some challenges with loading unstructured data and integrating some message queues or brokers. In one project, we had a problem connecting to one of the message queues and we had to take a different route altogether on Microsoft Azure. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I started using this product about two years ago at my last company. Now, I'm a registered Snowflake partner, so working with Snowflake for one of my clients.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

My clients haven't faced many stability challenges. It is a relatively new product that's still evolving. They're using it mainly for POCs, so they haven't faced any problems. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The most valuable aspect of Snowflake is its scalability. The volume of data, which I have seen across almost in terms of five terabytes and other terabytes of data, I didn't see issues.

How are customer service and support?

Snowflake technical support is good. At my previous company, they had a customer success officer for critical accounts, and they were accessible. When I registered as a partner, I also got a quick response from support. I would rate their support eight out of 10.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

Setting up Snowflake isn't complex. I've not seen any challenges.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

They have different pricing structures based on data usage. I think they have three or four tiers you can scale through. Most of the clients see an advantage from this type of licensing. That's the reason they go for it. It's priced competitively with other solutions.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Snowflake eight out of 10. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sr. Solution Architect at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Great features with excellent virtual warehousing and good architecture
Pros and Cons
  • "For us, the virtual warehousing is likely the most valuable aspect."
  • "I would like to see a client version of the GUI."

What is our primary use case?

We're running a POC to test scalability, performance, on-demand resource management, workload management, et cetera. The security aspect will also be important for us.

What is most valuable?

The product offers a lot of great features.

Architectural-wise, it's got great architecture. That's what we are looking for. It's kind of decoupled from storage and has virtual warehouses. We like that we can travel and keep things virtual. For us, the virtual warehousing is likely the most valuable aspect. You can spin up as many virtual warehouses that you want. That's quite useful as a feature.

What needs improvement?

I haven't found that the solution is lacking any features. It's quite complete.

I would like to see a client version of the GUI. Right now, it is a web GUI, which has stored the SQL, the worksheets. We are asking for that from Snowflake. We'd like to understand how can we save these worksheets on our local desktop. That is not there at this point.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for about the past year as part of a POC.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

In the past, we've used an SQL server. On the cloud side of it, we do have some experience. Snowflake, however, is the new data warehouse solution that we are looking into it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

If necessary, we may have to get into Synapse, and do a kind of a pilot project with that as well. We may evaluate them both to see which is better. We are not there yet. We are just working on Snowflake.

What other advice do I have?

We are a direct customer and end-user.

We've been using the solution during a POC for the last year or so. It's a pilot project to test its feasibility for our company. We're just starting to get performance stats and stuff like that.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we are currently using. I don't recall the exact version number. Usually, people are running the latest version. Whatever the latest available option is is likely the number we are on.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We're still in the POC phase, however, based on what we have seen, we are quite satisfied.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
DominicMackenzie - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior data architect at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
It is very fast and the performance is great but has some technical quirks
Pros and Cons
  • "It is very fast and the performance is great."
  • "It doesn't enforce typical relational database constraints. Quite expensive."

What is our primary use case?

I use it for data warehousing. I just design databases, put data in there, and get data out.

What is most valuable?

Although I haven't used it much, it is very fast and the performance is great.

What needs improvement?

It has some technical quirks that whoever is using it needs to be aware of. It doesn't enforce typical relational database constraints. If you're not aware of that, you can really put some bad data in there.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using it for about three months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would give it a ten out of ten. I haven't seen it failover.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I've never had any issues with it. It is being extensively used. We have between a hundred and a thousand users using Snowflake.

How are customer service and support?

I have not had any experience with customer support, but I've heard it's good.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I've heard it's quite expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I would give Snowflake a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Flag as inappropriate
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Snowflake Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Snowflake Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.