Snowflake Reviews

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.

This solution could be improved by offering machine learning apps. 

We have used this solution for one year. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. 

Before Snowflake, we used Azure.

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

We have not yet experienced ROI. 

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

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I use this solution to create a proof of concept. I also create training for companies on Snowflake.

It is a very easy-to-use solution. It is user-friendly, and its setup time is very less.

They have a new console, but I couldn't figure out anything in the new console. So, if I shift to the old console, I can figure out where to create the database schema and other things, but I have no idea where to go in the new console. That's one thing they can improve. I don't know why they created a new console to confuse. The old, classic console is much better.

I started using Snowflake three months ago. 

It is stable.

It is scalable.

It is so easy that I didn't have to look for technical support. Its documentation is amazingly simple.

I also use Databricks for proof of concept and training. I have used Databricks much longer than Snowflake. Both have their own pros and cons.

In terms of ease of use, UI, and setup time, Snowflake is good. I would rate Snowflake a nine out of 10 from these aspects. In terms of workload, Databricks has higher points. The underlying infrastructure is faster for Databricks, which is not the case with Snowflake. Snowflake is a cloud database. So, in terms of processing power, Databricks has an advantage over Snowflake. Databricks is more suitable for larger workloads, whereas, for a regular or typical data warehouse that you want to run on the cloud, Snowflake is more suitable. 

Its setup was easy. You can create a connection and be up and running within half an hour.

I set it up myself.

I have not been billed yet, but it should be less. I'm still running the trial version, but it seems to be less than Databricks.

You must try it out. It is a wonderful product. I would also recommend trying out other products, such as Yellowbrick, and doing a comparison. Redshift has also come up with some serverless options. BigQuery is also there. BigQuery is as easy as Snowflake. So, my recommendation or advice is to try out these things and then pick the one that suits you. I don't have any bias towards any of the products. I have an impartial opinion about all the cloud data warehousing products.

I would rate it a nine out of 10.

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.

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.

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.

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

It is pretty stable. Its stability is excellent.

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.

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

It is straightforward. It is not that complex.

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

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

I would rate it an eight out of 10.

Snowflake is good for analytical purposes when you have a lot of historical or sales data that you need to release and use for different types of analysis, such as tracking sales and measuring the performance of your sales team and product.

The product's most important feature is unloading data to S3. It provides a single syntax query to analyze data directly from a database to an S3 bucket.

The product's performance could be improved.

I have been using Snowflake for a couple of months. We are using the latest version.

The product is stable.

We did not need to scale our Snowflake environment beyond what we needed. We have a fixed amount of traffic from a fixed number of clients. We know the load we need to handle, and based on that, our subscription is made.

Snowflake is cost-effective. The pricing is better than Firebolt. Firebolt is better when there is idle time. If we run Snowflake all the time, the cost will be higher.

We are working on two solutions for Snowflake, one for the cloud and one for on-premises. It has good documentation. If someone goes through it, they will quickly understand how it works. However, Firebolt's documentation is more comprehensive. If I need faster results, I'll prefer the Firebolt; if I need performance, I'll use Snowflake.

Overall, I rate it a nine out of ten.

We use the solution to build the pipelines in stream sets, including data source, data warehouse, and destination endpoints.

The solution's most valuable features are storage, run time, scalability, and minimum query time compared to other vendors.

The solution's stability needs improvement.

I have been using the solution for seven or eight months.

Recently, I encountered an issue with the solution's data warehouse. The resource monitor had exceeded its quota. I rate its stability as an eight.

I rate the solution's scalability as a nine.

We use Hive and Hadoop as well. Snowflake is more stable and scalable.

The solution is more straightforward to use than the other IDBMS tools. It has a simple query process. Its computing time is less as well. One can easily have access to it. I rate it as a nine.

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.

Positive

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

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.

I rate Snowflake eight out of 10. 

We are completely migrating to Snowflake, and we are in transition. It is primarily to combine all our data repositories into a single place. We have SAP BW and SAP HANA, and some of our business units have their own databases. We chose Snowflake to consolidate all of our data into a single place and then build enterprise data. We are then going to provide the data for our businesses in shared databases, on which they would do reporting. They will also have the ability to bring in their own data, which is currently not possible. They will also be able to do advanced analytics, machine learning, and AI in Snowflake, which is not fully possible on our current platforms. It will be used for all the operational reporting, such as sales, supply chain, appraising, and merchandising. We just started to do reporting related to sales and supply chain inventory.

We have its latest version. It is currently deployed on Amazon AWS, but we are moving to Google.

There are so many features that Snowflake offers to address the challenges that people have been facing in the traditional data warehouses for a long time. It allows us to have a single repository for all the data. Currently, we have data repositories all over the place, and we want to bring everyone onto one platform so that it can be utilized across the organization. Currently, we need database administrators and SAP administrators to manage multiple databases and platforms. With Snowflake, we don't need any admin, and there is zero maintenance. All we need is a platform architect who can just manage the Snowflake platform to create databases and security roles, and then you can share the data. By integrating everything into a single Snowflake platform, we have lowered the total cost of ownership quite a bit.

The ability to share the data and the ability to scale up and down easily are the most valuable features. The concept of data sharing and data plumbing made it very easy to provide and share data. The ability to refresh your Dev or QA just by doing a clone is also valuable. It has the dynamic scale up and scale down feature. 

Development and deployment are much easier as compared to other platforms where you have to go through a lot of stuff. With a tool like DBT, you can do modeling and transformation within a single tool and deploy to Snowflake. It provides continuous deployment and continuous integration abilities.

There is a separation of storage and compute, so you only get charged for your usage. You only pay for what you use. When we share the data downstream with business partners, we can specifically create compute for them, and we can charge back the business.

They need to incorporate some basic OLAP capabilities in the backend or at the database level. Currently, it is purely a database. They call it purely a data warehouse for the cloud. Currently, just like any database, we have to calculate all the KPIs in the front-end tools. The same KPIs again need to be calculated in Snowflake. It would be very helpful if they can include some OLAP features. This will bring efficiency because we will be able to create the KPIs within Snowflake itself and then publish them to multiple front-end tools. We won't have to recreate the same in each project. 

There should be the ability to automate raised queries, which is currently not possible. There should also be something for Exception Aggregation and things like that.

I have been using this solution for two years.

It is all cloud. It is really stable. We haven't seen any problems.

We can scale up or down based on our needs. We don't have tons and tons of data, but based on the quality feedback from our vendors, it can handle large volumes and has the competency. With the dynamic scale-up feature, we are confident that it is going to meet all our requirements.

Currently, our number of users is very limited because we have just started the migration. We don't have many users on the platform. All of our focus is on Snowflake because we're moving to Snowflake, and its usage will increase in the future.

I do not directly interact with the support, but I believe our platform architect reached out, and he got a response.

We had SAP BW and SAP HANA as our main data platforms. We are slowly decommissioning SAP BW and SAP HANA and completely migrating to Snowflake. We wanted to have a single repository for all the data. The cost was also a factor.

It is straightforward. To expose the data in the cloud, we had to go through our info security and legal, so that's the part that took time. After that is done, the process for setting up the platform, getting signed up with the initial free credits, and signing up the licensing for the credits was straightforward.

We are working with a system integrator or vendor for this project. Our strategy is to work with an experienced vendor for the first project, and after that, we would be able to drive things forward.

Our experience with them is good. They're building the architecture of Snowflake. They have experience, and we have our own thoughts. We are working together and making sure that the architecture is for the long-term and not just for one project. Whenever we see that their focus is limited to the project, we are asking them questions to make sure that they are making the right decision.

In terms of maintenance, it doesn't require any maintenance, but you do require architects. We have three architects. One architect is responsible for the platform and takes care of creating security rules, grants, and users. We also have an integration architect who is responsible for data acquisition, ETL, and stuff like that. We have a data architect who is responsible for the overall data architecture in terms of what layers we need to establish and how do we model the data and publish that for consumption.

There is a separation of storage and compute, so you only pay for what you use. 

The key part is skill set because Snowflake is all SQL-driven data warehousing. Internally, we have some SAP BW development resources, and they need to learn and move on to understanding SQL-based coding and custom data warehousing concepts.

I would rate Snowflake a nine out of ten.

Our aim was to migrate everything from on-premise, so we just migrated as it is and then we had issues. Some use cases that were running on-premises were not installed. We just went through each case and then finalized the issues with some of the packages that were not working or some users that were not getting what they were expecting. We did deep analysis on each and every case and then looked for options in Snowflake and are now working with the team to move everything over to Snowflake. 

The data warehouse is one of the great concepts of Snowflake. The coding plans are also a great feature. You can switch out the values or sizes. 

It would be helpful if implementation could be handled more on the user-side. We need to train the users on best practices and how to use the solution properly. It's a cost issue. If they don't run it properly then it'll end up costing more money.

There are some stored procedures that we've had trouble with. The solution also needs to fine-tune the connectors to be able to connect into the system source.

The solution is stable. We had only one failure, but that was because of AWS issues. Beyond that, I haven't seen anything else. From the Snowflake side, within 10 minutes they reported the AWS issue. It was under two hours of downtime because of the quick response.

As long as you don't need to worry about storage or cost, this solution would be one of the best ones on the market for scalability purposes. We've migrated about 400-450 dealers onto the solution so far. We do intend to expand usage so there will be more users and more data. The drawbacks we've had with on-premises was space being a constraint and the user code having limitations.

Customer support is good. There is always someone who's going to respond. They will let you know what can be done and what is possible.

We did some testing and some comparisons, but it's all set up now and running fine. The deployment took about three months. Since we didn't want to disrupt the on-premises, or overload the system, we did most of the migrations on the weekend.

For maintenance, in the beginning, until you are through with training and performance tuning, you will need more people. You might need to start with seven or so, and then, for ongoing work, probably one or two people can manage it. 

We had a Snowflake consultant on-site that assisted us with the implementation.

It's an expensive solution. We can't predict exactly how much until we've streamlined everything and the user requirements have been completed, but normally they charge on the storage, which depends upon the average storage amount used for the month.

We looked at IBM because it also has on-premise solutions. We also looked at Azure as well as AWS.

Because most of the issues you come across can be dealt with on the user's sites, it's important to educate the users and understand their requirements.

The best advice I can give is to understand the product and to try to stick to what is required. From the business side, you need to monitor usage and monitor the space because of on-premises constraints. If it gets filled up then you will have to react. However, this solution is very scalable. 

I would rate this solution between seven and eight out of ten. The solution still has some constraints that need to be addressed.