After launching the Snowflake Partner Network channel program, fast-growing data cloud company Snowflake is expanding the scope of its channel efforts to recruit SaaS application developers and data providers to the company’s partner ecosystem.
Snowflake also continues to increase channel program resources and infrastructure – an enhanced partner finder portal just went live this month – as the company’s channel operations keep pace with – and continue to fuel – Snowflake’s rapid growth.
Snowflake, which went public in a blockbuster IPO in September 2020, has broadened its target market beyond its initial focus on cloud data warehousing to cover a range of data-related services and tasks including data science and engineering, data exchange and sharing, data marketplaces, data migration and transformation, data analytics, and data-intensive applications.
The Snowflake Partner Network, launched in June 2020, today supports service partners who provide a range of system design and implementation, application and data migration, performance optimisation, data preparation, and analytics services. Leading partners include Accenture, Cognizant, Deloitte, Slalom, Analytics8 and Visual BI Solutions.
Global systems integrator Deloitte, for example, has assembled a $100 million Snowflake practice with professional services such as data transformation.
Slalom has been working globally with Snowflake for several years, providing a range of data transformation and data migration services around the Snowflake platform, particularly for moving legacy data warehouse and data lake systems from on-premises to the cloud, said Hilary Feier, managing director of data and analytics at the Seattle-based solution provider.
SPN also has a track for technology partners who build connections between their products and the Snowflake platform including data management tool providers Alation, Informatica and Matillion; and business analytics software developers such as Tableau and Qlik. (In March Snowflake tightened its alliance with data analytics company ThoughtSpot with a $20 million investment.)
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Snowflake is now expanding its program to accommodate two new types of partners: Data Partners for companies that offer data sets and services through the Snowflake marketplace; and Powered by Snowflake for Software-as-a-Service application vendors that build multi-tenant, customer-facing applications that work with Snowflake.
At the recent Snowflake Summit virtual conference for customers, the company said it already has some 160 Data Partners, offering three or more listings on the data marketplace for more than 500 listings altogether.
Given the data-intensive nature of artificial intelligence and machine learning development, the new Data Partners track will play a role there as well. “The sky’s the limit with what we’re going to be able to do with respect to AI and ML for the partner experience,” said Philip Larson, Snowflake senior director of worldwide partner programs.
Feier at Slalom said she is starting to see pockets of demand for Snowflake’s data sharing and data monetisation services. The two companies are also exploring possible joint opportunities around professional services.
Snowflake also has been stepping up its training and certification resources for both partners and customers. The company provides sales professional training for partners in such areas as data engineering and data applications and technical sales professional training in “customer journey.” Partners can also provide hands-on training labs for their customers.
Partners can earn “Hands-On Essentials” certification badges in a data warehouse, data sharing and data applications with badges for data science, data engineering and data lake coming soon. Also on the horizon is the Snowpro Advanced Certification Series of role-based industry professional certifications with a core certification badge and badges for an architect, data analyst, data engineer, data scientist and database administrator.
