Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

Those who use data wisely have competitive advantages and more profits. As a result, companies are increasing their focus on improving their data literacy. For example, the importance of data has led companies like AppNexus1 and Chevron2 to conduct internal data science competitions to identify and hone analytical talent. But, as noted in the kickoff blog post to our series on data-driven organizations, merely having data does not ensure you have a useful interpretation of that data.

Since Snowflake’s inception we’ve had the needs of our customers as our North Star, with a clear focus on security and governance of data, continuous advances on performance and reduction of latencies, and relentless capabilities innovation. As part of our product development, we constantly evaluate where open standards, open formats, and open source can help or hinder our progress towards those goals. In short, it is a matter of degree.

The global pandemic continues to impact our world in so many ways. But it has also served as a catalyst for technological change—a forcing function that is accelerating cloud migration. Every company wants to create better products or services, differentiate offerings, price strategically, grab more market share, retain customers, and grow in a sustainable manner.

The velocity of change is accelerating. The rate of change businesses are experiencing is just astounding. As many organizations have experienced during the pandemic, especially in their supply chain, the need for the data environment to be able to deliver faster is now mission-critical for all! We need better data—but at a rate that’s much faster than before. Businesses need their data teams to become more responsive to changing data demands. That means they need agility.

Snowflake customers want to discover insights from their data faster than ever, which is challenging because data volumes are growing at a breakneck pace. Effective searches are critical to customer satisfaction. Today, we’re excited to announce the general availability of search optimization, which significantly improves the performance of selective queries on large tables.

In a 2020 study performed by Nature Research, 70 different teams of neuroimaging experts were asked to test nine hypotheses by looking at the same MRI data set. You may not be surprised to learn that these teams reached a wide range of different conclusions, in part because no two teams chose identical workflows to analyze the data. With seventy teams, there were 70 different workflows.

Snowflake continued expanding its platform capabilities at the start of the new year, adding updates to data sharing, Snowsight, and data pipelines that help customers and partners access, mobilize, and share their data for better data-driven outcomes. Here’s a brief rundown of some of the exciting announcements from January 2021.

Snowflake met with Jan Doumen, Head of Expertise for Allianz Benelux, and Naveed Memon, Program Director, Data and Analytics for Emirates, at Data Cloud Summit 2020. Read excerpts from the conversation to learn how capturing data insights in the Data Cloud brings value to their businesses. Data’s value in the 21st century is often compared to oil’s value in the 18th century. It can transform organizations, opening doors to unprecedented opportunities.