In short
Visian advises on, integrates and industrialises Snowflake for large companies: target architecture, migration from on-premise warehouses, dbt and Airflow pipelines, FinOps and governance. The choice against Databricks or Fabric depends on use cases, in-house skills and the existing cloud.
Snowflake
The technology
Snowflake is a cloud data platform that separates storage and compute. It runs on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud and covers data warehousing, data sharing and analytical workloads.
The ease of getting started hides two issues: controlling consumption (virtual warehouses, unoptimised queries) and organising data (layers, permissions, conventions), without which the platform reproduces existing silos.
Commitments
Visian engagements on Snowflake
- Scoping and target architecture, choosing between Snowflake, Databricks or BigQuery
- Migration from an on-premise warehouse (Teradata, Oracle, SQL Server)
- Industrialised ingestion and transformation pipelines (dbt, Airflow)
- FinOps: warehouse sizing, cost tracking and reduction
- Governance: roles, sensitive data masking, catalogue
These engagements are part of the Data platformexpertise, on a fixed-price, time-and-materials or service-centre basis.
Comparison
Snowflake, Databricks and Fabric
| Criterion | Snowflake | Databricks | Microsoft Fabric |
|---|---|---|---|
| Philosophy | Governed SQL platform with no infrastructure to manage | Open workshop for bespoke data engineering and AI | Integrated SaaS analytics suite for Microsoft 365 and Power BI |
| Billing | Compute consumed (credits) | Compute consumed (DBUs) | Reserved capacity |
| Team profile | SQL analysts and engineers | Data engineers, data scientists (Python, Spark) | BI and Power BI teams |
| Open formats | Iceberg | Delta Lake, Iceberg | Delta Lake (OneLake) |
Source: Visian white paper Snowflake, Databricks or Fabric? (in French, October 2026).
Key figures
Facts and figures
- 350 data & AI consultants and 120+ projects delivered since 2016 (Visian, 2026).
- 98% of FinOps teams manage AI costs in 2026, up from 31% in 2024, and 72% of organisations had an unexpected AI bill spike during the year (Visian white paper FinOps Data & IA, 2026).
Frequently asked questions
Snowflake: FAQ
Snowflake or Databricks?
Snowflake is often chosen for SQL analytics and ease of operation, Databricks for Spark processing and large-scale data science. The choice depends on target uses, in-house skills and the existing cloud estate.
How can the Snowflake bill be kept under control?
Through right-sized virtual warehouses, auto-suspend, tracking the most expensive queries and usage rules shared with the teams.