Snowflake is Dying on the Vine?

Like Sparks Fly Upwards, Snowflake Is Born To Trouble

An old man once said that man is born to trouble as sparks fly upwards. I think maybe he meant to say Snowflake. I know well that probably many of my readers have drunk the forbidden cup of fandom-koolaid meant to blind all those who taste that drink.

But, fan or no, it’s good to be critical of the software we use every day, besides, it can be pretty entertaining.

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Databricks, but even so, I have no compunction to pull my punches, I see what I see and will call out the silly things when I see them.

I understand the draw of Snowflake and we all have to acquiesce to the reasons that Snowflake became as big and popular as it is today. They did something right to get there. Bringing SQL at scale, seamlessly to the masses.

But, it doesn’t take much figuring to do the calculations and figure out that Snowflake has been getting a bumpy ride of late. Get out the popcorn, let’s dig in.

Digging into Snowflake.

I’m not sure if it’s just a string of bad luck or what, but Snowflake has been put through the wringer the last few weeks. I mean can you imagine working in Marketing or Sales at Snowflake right now?

Yikes.

• Snowflake is embroiled in a large and much-publicized data breach.

• Databricks steals Tabular out from under Snowflake (swallowing iceberg) and slaps them in the face with open-source Unity Catalog.

I mean dang it. The stock price of Snowflake over the last few months pretty much tells the picture of what has been going on for them recently.

Now the real question is this …

Is this simply some bad timing, a little blip on the overall trajectory of Snowflake’s long-term outlook that they will weather, or is it indicative of larger issues?

This is something to think about, I’m sure companies have survived much worse. But, it does make one sit up and pause a moment and ask yet another very important question that does have ramifications.

Is Snowflake still a good place to park your data and invest time, money, resources, and future development … or should you jump ship?

Data Platforms and Choosing Your Poison.

The reality is that every day a new Data Platform comes online, a team decides to migrate tools, and a company looks to expand. What does that mean?

That means that Data Folk go on the hunt for new tools and starts the comparison game of “what tool should we adopt at the core of our data processing.”

I mean think about what someone is going to find if they start researching now. They are going to find all the bad stuff, true or not, they will see all the negative news and Snowflake will get a black mark out of the box before things have even started.

• It’s clear Snowflake is being beaten badly in the AI and ML space.

• They got whipped in the Data Catalog and open Data Lake format war.

Anyone who walks in the Data Land day in and day out also probably would have noticed that Snowflake has been greatly lacking in the sort of “look we are innovating and releasing new things space.”

All you have to do is pursue the Snowflake blog and look for big announcements, not much going on.

I mean there were a few token AI stuff that are basically glorified Chat Bots. But nothing earth-shaking.

It’s easy to get caught up in the bad news, but what do the numbers of the ground look like?

What do you notice about these summarized reports on Snowflake? I noticed the customer numbers for revenue greater than 1 million and the number of Forbes Global customers.

They are increasing.

If it was really all doom and gloom things would be shrinking not increasing.

But is Snowflake really going anywhere?

I think the demise of Snowflake is greatly exaggerated. If you go around and look on r/dataengineering you can see that there are lots of Data Engineers who use Snowflake and LIKE Snowflake.

When Engineers like a tool, it’s probably going to stay around.

People forget the mass Legacy Systems still running.

This is what most people forget about, those who have been using Databricks and Snowflake for years … that there is a whole set, a VERY LARGE SET of companies and Data Teams who still are running old systems and are looking to upgrade and migrate.

• SQL Server

• Oracle

• Redshift

• MySQL and Postgres

There are many companies still using the above technologies to run Data Warehouses. Every one of those places is having FOMO and WILL at some point adopt the new technologies … and one of those options is Snowflake.

When you have been fighting and tuning SQL Server Data Warehouses for years, moving to Snowflake will be like a blast of fresh air, and Engineers and Data Platform teams will LOVE IT.

Snowflake vs Databricks vs …?

That still leaves a valid question for Data Platform teams … should I pick Snowflake or something else? Sure, I would argue that Databricks has spanked Snowflake in AI and ML space … heck, even in the Open Catalog and Lake House format space.

BUT, that doesn’t mean there are a ton of SQL-heavy teams who will always be more comfortable moving from SQL Server to Snowflake rather than Databricks.

Snowflake is SQL, SQL always wins the hearts of Data Engineers. Snowflake might be wilting on the vine a little, but I doubt it will die anytime soon.

The biggest fear is that Snowflake will be the next IBM if they don’t start to get cracking.