CNME editor Mark Forker managed to safe an unique interview with Mohamed Zouari, managing director, Center East, Turkey and Africa at Snowflake, on the Information for Breakfast seminar held in Dubai final month – in an effort to seek out out extra about their new The Snowpark framework – and why Snowflake’s ease of use is why the corporate is so loyally cherished by their finish customers globally. 
CNME was current at Snowflake’s Information for Breakfast seminar held on the Arabian Court docket, One and Solely Royal Mirage in Dubai Marina.
The occasion is designed as an instance the ability of the Snowflake Information Cloud providing, which is complemented by buyer tales and testimonials.
Snowflake hosts these roadshows in over 100 cities globally, with 4 of them being held in Dubai, Riyadh, Johannesburg and Cape City to cowl the Center East and Africa area.
CNME spoke to Snowflake’s managing director for the Center East, Turkey and Africa. Mohamed Zouari mentioned the symposiums allowed the corporate to reveal its new improvements and spotlight the important thing areas it’s concentrating on over the following 12 months.
“The primary objective and goal of the tour is for Snowflake to showcase and reveal the newest improvements now we have in our product portfolio. Clients are eager to attend these roadshows because it provides them the chance to know what the important thing areas of focus are that we’ll be taking a look at over the following 12 months. They need to know what Snowflake brings to the desk by way of AI and the information area,” Zouari mentioned.
Zouari additionally added {that a} key component of the roadshows was the possibility for his or her prospects to share their Snowflake journeys.
“Potential prospects who attend these occasions love listening to the success tales from our current prospects because it provides them a greater understanding and data of the journey they’ve taken whereas utilizing our expertise – whereas they will additionally interact in peer-to-peer discussions. and networking,” Zouari mentioned.
As for the newest improvements and merchandise that Snowflake was showcasing, Zouari could not include his pleasure about his new Snowpark body.
“I’m very enthusiastic about our new Snowpark setting. Snowflake’s imaginative and prescient from the start has been centered on giving prospects entry to easy-to-use options. It is important to offer customers all of the elements they want on the subject of ingesting, remodeling and utilizing information in a single place, which permits time to market to be virtually fast,” mentioned Zouari.
Zouari added that Snowpark gives customers autonomy and suppleness.
“What Snowpark permits us to do is give builders, information engineers, and information scientists the flexibility to maintain their language of alternative, like python and Java, and their improvement environments. Nonetheless, we’ll run it below Snowflake. For them, it is quicker, cheaper, and inside the similar information units that information analysts already use. It is a huge marketplace for us, and after we go for innovation, we at all times concentrate on efficiency, so it needs to be at the very least 2x quicker than any current expertise, and we cut back prices by 50-60%,” mentioned Zouari .
Zouari mentioned their capacity to know their prospects’ wants gave them an enormous benefit available in the market.
“Clearly, we’re a really data-driven firm, however we won’t see our prospects’ information, nonetheless, we will see their metadata, which permits us to know what our buyer ecosystem is. Spark and Python are the #1 workloads working on our platform after we have a look at our 8,000 prospects. There are loads of gamers available in the market, however when you think about the challenges like separate layers, different applied sciences, transferring information exterior of your surroundings, a scarcity of governance and safety, then that offers us an enormous benefit due to {our capability}. to deliver all these workloads below Snowflake and by doing that we will remedy all these challenges concurrently,” mentioned Zouari.
As for what units Snowflake aside from its rivals available in the market, Zouari pointed to a few components, which had been its ease of use, which gave prospects unparalleled satisfaction. It’s a multi-cloud providing and information collaboration.
“I believe our ease of use is likely one of the basic causes our prospects love Snowflake. For six years in a row, the Dresner Advisory Survey has indicated that 100% of our prospects would suggest Snowflake to others. As well as, multi-cloud is important as a result of everybody, even when they’re locked right into a single cloud supplier, is satisfied that within the brief to medium time period they are going to be in multi-cloud. A few of them transfer fully from one cloud supplier to a different, so as an alternative of redoing all the things within the information and AI area when you could have these selections to make, having a cloud-agnostic platform lets you simply transfer it at Snowflake, which is a large factor. advantages,” mentioned Zouari.
Zouari mentioned Snowflake was the equal of Google when it got here to discovering the information units it’s essential eat to enhance your online business operations.
“All prospects at the moment need exterior information and need to share and eat information. Information collaboration is our bread and butter, and that is how we construct these information clouds. In at the moment’s local weather, prospects wish to third-party information functions to make their information technique extra correct. These information units are on Snowflake Market, if you would like demographic information as a result of it can have an affect in your technique, if you would like COVID information, if you would like climate and transportation information, it is all on Snowflake. Our founders name us the Web of Information. We made the information area appear like the search engine area. Once you want one thing at the moment, you go to Google and get search outcomes, we do the identical with information units, should you want information concerning the retail sector, you search on Snowflake and eat the information set you want,” mentioned Zouari.
Zouari mentioned Snowflake was not absolutely centered on the IT facet of information as a part of their efforts to unlock a possible $3 trillion addressable market.
“The overall addressable marketplace for information platforms is $250 billion globally. In response to a McKinsey report on information collaboration, which highlighted how we at Snowflake strategy this, recommended that information collaboration can unlock as much as $3 trillion in annual enterprise worth. We’re not specializing in the IT facet of the information, we’re specializing in how a lot enterprise we will unlock for purchasers,” mentioned Zouari.
Zouari highlighted how the monetary companies sector is certainly one of Snowflake’s largest business verticals on a worldwide scale.
“All the things is information pushed and there’s a lot of information consumption in all monetary companies. All their selections are pushed by information. As well as, the healthcare sector can be extraordinarily essential to us and once more, it’s an business that’s pushed by information to attain higher outcomes,” mentioned Zouari.
Final month on the Cell World Congress in Barcelona, Snowflake launched and introduced the brand new Information Cloud for the telecommunications sector.
“We need to use our expertise to handle their information throughout all their strains of enterprise. Telecom operators are at all times seeking to broaden and are determined to monetize their information. It helps them with their go-to-market technique, and the expertise wasn’t obtainable earlier than for them to make it easy, however that is the place we are available,” concluded Zouari.
