However, in an environment where competition for innovation and speed in data analysis is fierce, the incorporation of AI has emerged as a key transformative factor for Snowflake and its customers.
Snowflake has integrated AI into its platform to take data analysis to an unprecedented level. This integration not only improves the platform’s ability to handle big data, but also transforms how insights are extracted and used from this data. Snowflake’s cloud-native architecture and scalable infrastructure make it an ideal platform for integrating AI technologies. By combining Snowflake’s robust data warehousing capabilities with advanced AI techniques, organizations can achieve a more holistic and intelligent approach to data analysis.
This year we had the opportunity to attend the Snowflake Summit 2024, a big opportunity for us to get to know the latest information about AI from Snowflake, among other interesting tech topics and products. In addition to that, there were a few announcements that really caught our attention and that we think will be of great interest to the data engineering community, starting with a lot of topics around AI and more.
The Snowflake Summit 2024 has established itself as one of the most relevant events in the world of technology and data analysis. This meeting, which brings together industry leaders, IT professionals and data technology enthusiasts, has become a showcase for the latest innovations and trends in the Snowflake ecosystem, a leading platform for data storage and analysis in the cloud, and also artificial intelligence in data management, LLM, process automation. Below we share the highlights that we believe are key to the future of working with Snowflake.
In this edition, Snowflake has unveiled a series of innovations that promise to transform the way companies manage and explore their data. Among the most notable announcements is the introduction of new capabilities for Snowflake Data Cloud, which improve real-time data integration and analysis. The company has launched advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning tools that allow organizations to obtain deeper and more precise insights from their data.
The following are the four main topics that we consider key. Below we discuss some of the areas and products presented at the summit that will surely generate important innovations for the future, starting about their innovation in AI, that without a doubt caught everyone’s attention about what’s to expect with this tech advancements for the short term.
What was also worth mentioning was the presentation of Snowpark, a platform extension that allows developers to write code in various programming languages to directly interact with the data stored in Snowflake. This new functionality expands customization and optimization possibilities for complex analysis tasks.
Take a look about the biggest and more interesting topics we saw in the Snowflake Summit 2024:
Artificial Intelligence
This was definitely the area where Snowflake put the most effort, and it showed. The headline announcement was Snowflake Cortex AI, which provides access to industry-leading LLM models. This allows users to build and deploy AI-powered applications with great ease. With Cortex, companies can bring AI directly to governed data, quickly extending access and governance policies to models.
Data Engineering
Some of the most important trends when it comes to data engineering have to do with three specific points. First of all, we need to talk about Serverless Tasks Flex, which offers customers a way to save up to 42% by allowing greater flexibility in when their tasks are executed.
Another interesting topic came in the form of the Iceberg Tables, in which Snowflake embraces the open source format that allows customers to store their data in cloud storage as parquet data files and can be queried directly from Snowflake.
Finally we need to talk about the long-awaited Dynamic Tables providing a declarative approach to creating simple incremental transformations and data pipelines using SQL SELECT statements.
Analyst & Developer Tooling
For this area, we need to highlight products like Snowflake Notebooks which are now in public preview, enabling an end-to-end interactive UI environment for data and AI teams.
Also Git Integration, that Allows users to sync files between Github/Gitlab/Bitbucket and Snowflake for better version control and management.
Data Governance & Security
For this topic, one of the main areas was Snowflake Horizon, which enables organizations to discover and govern data, applications, and models with an integrated set of compliance, security, privacy, interoperability, and access capabilities. It is a unified solution that solves problems across the enterprise, meeting the unique needs of the different users who work with the organization’s content.
Snowflake also introduced a new Data Lineage Visualization interface in the UI, currently in private preview, that will allow users to see upstream and downstream dependencies for all tables and views.
The Snowflake Summit 2024 has proven to be a crucial event in understanding where cloud data technologies are headed. With its focus on innovation, sustainability and security, Snowflake continues to set high standards in the world of data analytics, offering companies powerful tools to meet the challenges of the future.