What are your thoughts on Snowflake as a Cloud data warehouse?
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This is a great platform. Provides a really good user interface which help democratize the data to business. Don't compare with Databricks which is more heavily focus on Big data / data engineering persona though they are aiming to go towards same business persona too. Snowflake has lots of Data sharing feature which enables vendor - third party data easily accessible via ETL, in any enterprise you could easily reduce ETL footprint and simplify data movement landscape without much sacrifice.
Snowflake is an excellent option for a cloud data warehouse. I have worked on it and optimized the design while building analytics layers for the data science and ML teams. Many cool features are available, like dynamic tables, snowpark, multi-cluster virtual warehouse, materialized views, search optimization service, query acceleration service, clustering feature, and Snowflake cortex. Snowflake can be expensive, but I have seen many customers using it, with data sizes in terabytes, if not petabytes.
You might also look into Databricks as they have tonnes of features, and they both are competitors.
Snowflake offers a powerful data platform with many advanced features, but its cost can become a concern for organizations as they progress in their journey. Some of the standout features include Time Travel, which allows users to access historical data; Dynamic Tables, enabling efficient data management; and Zero Copy Clone, which allows duplication of data without additional storage costs. Additionally, its data sharing capabilities are widely praised, as highlighted in other discussions.
However, to fully leverage Snowflake while avoiding unexpected expenses, it’s crucial to train your users on how to efficiently manage and optimize warehouse usage. Without proper understanding, misuse of warehouses can lead to significantly higher bills, particularly due to unnecessary scaling or inefficient query handling. Careful planning and user education are key to maximizing the benefits of Snowflake while controlling costs.