Snowflake Analytics Reviews

Snowflake replaces enterprise data warehouses that have traditionally been on-premise and had to be managed by the enterprises themselves. We are a services company and we create these data platforms for our enterprise customers in a variety of industries including health care, education, travel and tourism. We create and build services around Snowflake and part of my job is to assess its suitability for our enterprise customers. We are partner of Snowflake. 

The solution is completely managed and that's fantastic. Its a true SaaS kind of Data platform. You can create analytical products as a SaaS offering, nothing needs to be installed and no licenses needed. The solution can run on AWS, Azure and on Google Cloud and you can choose the underlying cloud on which Snowflake creates your databases, uses different services, stores your accounts and stores your data. It offers high flexibility. It offers computation completely decoupled from the storage so you pay fees for computation cost only, and storage is very very cheap. For example, within the enterprise data warehouse, if the total compute time is two hours a day but the traditional setup has to be maintained and managed round the clock, and the data also has to be permanently stored, them moving to Snowflake would ensure that the enterprise pay much less for storage, and pay for only 2 hours of computation. Performance-wise also it's a good solution. 

In your data platform, if you have a lot of computations, Snowflake can becomes costlier with. There can be some complexity when designing your warehouses or enterprise data, but that is based on your requirements and not the underlying warehouse that you choose.

I've been using this solution for about 4-5 years.

It's extremely stable because it's backed up, load-balanced and has the elasticity that the underlying cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) provides. 

The solution is scalable and has the concept of creating virtual resources, so as an example, I can buy 10 gigabytes of data capacity, then decide to process that data every day, Snowflake then takes care of creating multiple databases/storages, and scales by itself. I don't need any calculations of load or throughput worked out beforehand. For most other similar products, such as RedShift or Azure Synapse, you have to work out your average load and peak loads beforehand , and provision the warehouse and other services. In Snowflake, you don't need to do that, it auto-scales up and down.

Customer service has and support are at par with any professional Data Platform service.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. You buy an account, and add the number of accounts you need, and that's it. It takes about five minutes. 

The solution can become expensive when you increase your computation. So one has to design the solution very carefully and optimally. Leverage it heavily for Storage, but for compute, make sure the resources (e.g. Virtual Warehouses, Snowpipe, Streams, Tasks etc.) as well as the transformations are used in the most optimum way. For example, during the design time, the technical team has to wisely think if your data marts can be Views or Tables (View consumes compute, but Tables consume Storage), how frequently your data marts need an update, whether you should write lesser but complex queries of more but simpler transformation queries and stored procedures and many other things. But its ease of use, decoupling of Compute from Storage, ability to share data, and highly managed behavior make it worth the money.

I highly recommend Snowflake wherever possible. 

I rate this solution 9 out of 10. 

We use this solution to move on-prem data to a cloud data warehouse where we have a requirement for more computation storage or when we need a plugin to work with specific technologies like ML, AI and Data Science. 

The advanced features like time travel, zero copy cloning and scalability have been most useful. Snowflake requires zero maintenance for Data Warehousing on the cloud system. It is more secure compared to any other data platforms that we have used. The tri secret key is the feature that gives a lot of confidence to customers. 

Moving data from legacy systems to Snowflake is not that easy. There are some cases where processors are not actually compatible with Snowflake. If Snowflake could offer compatible versions of other legacy system objects, that would be more convenient for anyone to move to Snowflake. 

When comparing MySQL with Snowflake, MySQL is faster in executing the complex queries compared to Snowflake. This is the only factor where Snowflake lags behind competitors in the market.

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

This is a scalable solution.

The customer service and support for this solution is good. We had previously failed to retrieve data after the time travel period. We had to raise a ticket with technical support team and they helped us. They charged us for this but were able to help us retrieve it.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. The beauty of Snowflake is that you can select the configuration you need. For example, if you have a requirement of a one terabyte load with high availability and 10 users, Snowflake will set it up for you to match these requirements. 

The ROI you receive using this solution depends on your use case and if you are starting from scratch or migrating from a legacy system. We have experienced a 40 to 50% improvement in ROI compared to legacy systems.

When using Snowflake, you pay based on your usage. They calculate how much CPU has been used. If you use excess warehouse storage, you are charged one credit per hour. If you are in Asia, you are charged $3 per credit. If you have 10 users running parallel with the same excess, you will be charged $30. 

Pricing for storage is calculated in the same way. You will pay upfront for the storage that you know you will need to consume. There is this option of prepaid consumption as well as post paid consumption. If you pay upfront, you will charged $20 per hour, per terabyte. If you paying after use, you will be charged $40 per terabyte.

There is close to zero maintenance required for this solution. 

You don't need to use traditional warehouses, vacuuming or indexing. A database administrator or system admin is not required.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

Using Snowflake, I can say it is built as a robust solution. Also, its analytical functioning is really quick.

Using Snowflake to load data from different sources is a valuable feature of the solution.

The solution needs to consider including some updates in the future. There is a need to add some new features to the solution to facilitate my work with Snowflake.

I have been using Snowflake Analytics for a year and two months. I'm using it because I'm a data engineer, and so I am a customer of Snowflake.

In my experience, I didn't face any crashes or anything related to data. So I think it's stable.

It's a scalable solution because you can analyze a huge amount of data in the solution. In my company, around ten developers are using the solution.

The initial setup is easy because it is a cloud solution. So you don't need to install anything. You can just connect to your account and write SQL queries or write the procedures. So you can manipulate it on the website directly, and also it's user-friendly.

The solution has some gold and premium plans, which I read in its documentation.

I would tell others to use the solution if it is available for them on the cloud since I think it's very easy to manipulate data and work with it. Also, it is not very difficult because it is based on SQL queries, JavaScript, and Python.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use the Snowflake platform for analytics and for data integration. We are partners with Snowflake. I'm the managing director. 

The solution auto-scales and provides concurrency. You can have different virtual warehouses without them impacting each other. It's flexible and infinitely scalable because it's on the cloud. 

For modeling of data as well as for AI and predictive analytics, they need to improve their integration into different Python and Jupyter notebooks. That is lacking but I understand they're working on it. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is easily scalable. 

Technical support is good, they'll escalate tickets if need be and they'll get engineers on board if that's what's required. 

The initial setup is straightforward, just click the button. 

The cost depends on the size and on what you're using. I've had customers who spend a million dollars a year and customers that spend $20,000 a year. If you're not using it, it shuts off and you're not paying anything. 

I would recommend starting small and growing into it. Don't overbuy. If you're going to get discounts and you're going to buy a block of credits for the year, make sure you need those blocks because you're not going to peak until the second or third year of implementation. It's easier than a traditional environment and allows for focus on the value that can be provided.

I rate this solution 10 out of 10. 

I use Streamlit apps and Snowflake Analytics for analytics, data warehousing, migration, creating reports, and segregation. It is used to create reports for analytics for users.

We don't have to transfer the data as Snowflake's data sharing capabilities allow us to handle data more efficiently. It stands out against the other tools in the market.

The most important feature is the warehouse functionality. Increasing the warehouse size helps cater to large amounts of data without worrying about performance issues.

When we insert data into a large table, it takes a lot of time. This performance issue can be improved.

I have been using Snowflake Analytics for almost four years. I have used it myself.

If you increase the size of the warehouse, the performance is taken care of. It scales well with large data volumes.

We don't handle the price part. However, our customer is happy with our services regarding Snowflake Analytics.

I would recommend Snowflake Analytics, even with the performance issue related to large table insertions.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The solution is a flexible data warehouse. It can be used for computing and storage. There's also the potential for automation. With Snowflake, you can use the same copy in multiple places.

Once your data is on Snowflake, you can have that data differential to reportings. You can start using the analytics on top of it as well.

The data integration is great. We don't have to do data pipeline creation or time travel testing. 

The storage is good.

It's got good optimization.

We really like the engineering and the data within Snowflake.

The performance has been good.

We like how we can have one copy that can be used in multiple places. 

We haven't seen any areas that are lacking. I can't recall coming across missing features. Over the last two to three years, we haven't had issues. 

I've used the solution for almost three years now.

The solution is stable. A lot of it comes pre-configured and we haven't had any issues with it. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze.

With Snowflake, you are using the cloud, storing data in a cloud. It's scalable for that reason. It's not a problem if you need to have more data or more space.

Typically, the client will have their own support team. We don't really deal with the support side of things. 

My understanding is that their support is pretty good and clients are happy with their level of service. They work hard to resolve issues. 

Positive

The deployments vary. We first need to understand what the deployment is, and how much data will be pulled. When it comes to implementation, sometimes clients do some revisions and that must be taken into account as well. 

You need some expertise. Setting up Snowflake, the installation, configuration, and everything, are all separate skills altogether. 

That said, it's not overly difficult. Most of it the things you're doing are automatic value configuring for the grid function.

We are able to handle the initial setup for clients. We collaborate with Snowflake.

We haven't witnessed any ROI, however, it's not really a goal of the solution. 

The cost of the solution depends on how much you are using it, and therefore, the pricing can vary from company to company.

We are partners with Snowflake. 

In the last four or five years, Snowflake has actually blown up. Before that, it was quite low in terms of visibility and potential. We have now done multiple engagements on Snowflake.

Right now the snowflake is adding the multiple clients we using all editions.

We're using a variety of clouds, including AWS and Azure. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. While we've done many complex implementations, Snowflake always has a way of simplifying things. 

One of the valuable features is the solution’s time travel capability. The loading process exhibits characteristics of low coding for similar loads. Unlike before, where extensive scripting was necessary, Snowflake Analytics simplifies tasks such as file exposure through SQL, a familiar and flexible language for all. Even common commands like the copy command become more straightforward, making coding in this solution more accessible and efficient.

The solution’s interface is good but it could be improved.

I have worked with the solution for almost three years.

The solution is highly stable.

The solution is highly scalable. We cater to enterprise businesses. I rate it a perfect ten.

The initial setup is straightforward, and the deployment process is quick and efficient.

The solution's pricing is affordable.

I recommend the solution. Overall, I rate it a perfect ten.

We use Snowflake Analytics as the main data source for a project.

The most valuable feature of Snowflake Analytics is the ability to control and manage the cost.

The solution’s scalability could be improved.

I have been using Snowflake Analytics for about two and a half years.

The solution's stability is pretty good. I rate Snowflake Analytics a nine out of ten for stability.

Around 1,000 users use the solution in our organization.

I rate Snowflake Analytics a six out of ten for scalability because we faced some issues on big projects.

The solution's technical support team responds on time, but some complicated issues take time to be resolved.

Snowflake Analytics is not an expensive solution, and its pricing is average.

Overall, I rate Snowflake Analytics an eight out of ten.