“Even with a recent market downturn, IT industry experts praise the cloud-based data storage and analytics service for its simplicity, applicability, and growth leadership among other attributes.” Says Connie Testa, CSS TEC Managing Director.
What is Snowflake, who does it serve, and why should we care?
Snowflake is an enterprise cloud data warehousing company making data storage and analysis more agile, simple, and streamlined than previously siloed data farms. The company, which IPO’d in 2020 to the tune of a record $70 billion in valuation, serves tech giant customers in finance, digital design, and entertainment including Capital One, Adobe, and Disney to name a few.
Not only has Snowflake impacted differentiated markets, but it also acts simultaneously as a direct competitor and customer to Google Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft Azure providing flexible cloud data storage and analytics. It’s safe to say Snowflake has cast quite a wide net over the market by keeping friends close and competitors even closer.
A few notes on the financial side…
Although Snowflake had the largest software IPO ever, its share price recently dropped down to $164, the lowest in its history. That being said, tech market experts aren’t wavering on the value prospect of this data warehousing unicorn. siliconangle.com‘s “Breaking Analysis” notes that although shares dropped, the panic selling off of stocks will almost certainly prompt panic buying insulating Snowflake’s market value in the short. This is due in part to the tremendous, trusted leadership of CEO, Frank Slootman who assumed the role at Snowflake after a short retirement period from ServiceNow.
SPEAR Invest’s, Ivana Delevska attributes the drop to interest rates and Snowflake’s conservative leadership expanding the company cautiously, which easily could be argued as a positive. Amazon, in fact, reported a similar decline in growth in Q4 of 2020 before spiking back with a growth percentage of 40% in Q4 of 2021 begging the question of whether cloud and data markets behave by their own distinct set of rules.
What are Snowflake’s advantages?
So as an IT professional, why use Snowflake itself, and why should you be targeting Snowflake experts for your expanding cloud data teams? As reported by customers of Snowflake:
- The software blends with already-established native data in lakes and siloed environments.
- Snowflake brings siloed information seamlessly together for simplified data integration.
- It offers exceptional security such as always-on encryption of data in transit and in rest.
While these advantages are extremely impressive and useful, the feature factor vaulting Snowflake above and beyond the competition is the wide ecosystem of clients and adaptations. As previously stated, not only does Snowflake work with some of the largest companies across industries, its software is already imbedded and used by direct competitors, Google Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft Azure.
What this means is that the database engineers on IT teams using those three softwares already use a portion of Snowflake, and it’s fair to assume the specialization of Snowflake database management and integration will only spike in demand in the workforce.
As stated in an earlier CSS Tec article, forward-thinking IT pros earn respect, and learning burgeoning software like Snowflake opens doors in a dynamic IT market environment.
What does the future hold for Snowflake?
Snowflake recently announced a new data cloud product catered specifically for healthcare and life sciences (known as HCLS). It currently serves healthcare industry organizations like Anthem and Spectrum Health, and aims to integrate the entire healthcare vertical to sustain organizational growth which is likely to only compound demand for Snowflake database experts.
How CSS Tech can help with the Snowflake talent market
CSS Tec provides superior staffing solutions for employers across a myriad of markets and industries in need of the highest quality IT assistance. Our sales and recruitment teams continuously monitor market trends and adapt to newly-required specializations like Snowflake database management, administration, and more.