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.
Engagements
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.
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.