Overview
Snowflake pioneered the cloud-native data warehouse and has grown into a comprehensive data platform. With separation of storage and compute, near-infinite scalability, and zero maintenance, it's become the default choice for modern data teams. Their Data Cloud vision enables secure data sharing across organizations.
Key Features
- ✓ Separation of Storage/Compute: Scale each independently
- ✓ **
Pros
- 👍 Best-in-class ease of use
- 👍 True cloud-native architecture
- 👍 Excellent performance out of the box
- 👍 Strong ecosystem and integrations
- 👍 Data Marketplace for external data
- 👍 Multi-cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP)
Cons
- 👎 Premium pricing (most expensive warehouse)
- 👎 Cost can spiral without governance
- 👎 Vendor lock-in concerns
- 👎 Less control than self-managed options
- 👎 Snowpark still maturing vs Spark
Best For
Teams who want a managed, scalable warehouse without operational overhead. Ideal for analytics, BI, and data sharing use cases. Companies with budget for quality.
Founded: 2012 HQ: Bozeman, MT