Data cloud: A game-changer for businesses to manage and share data

As the answer to mass data fragmentation, the data cloud is set to generate enormous value from utilising untapped or under-accessed data sources wherever they reside. With data’s consistent rise in volume and velocity, organisations are increasingly adopting a cloud-based model that offers flexibility and scalability. 

“Snowflake Data Cloud connects all the data sets together by creating a unified system connecting companies and data providers to the most relevant datasets while also creating a high performance and scalable platform to host different data workloads to make meaningful insights from this data,” said Sumeet Tandure, Sales Engineer at Snowflake, a cloud computing-based data warehousing company.

He was giving a masterclass titled ‘Data Cloud for Business: Why it matters & how it works?’ on Day 1 of the 12th edition of YourStory’s flagship startup-tech conference, TechSparks2021.

This year, with the theme 'What's Next: Rethinking the future', TechSparks 2021, YourStory's flagship startup-tech conference, is dedicating itself to providing a platform for the most defining conversations on how disruptive technology innovations can shape our lives post-pandemic.

To this end, TechSparks 2021 has brought together a constellation of over 400 global leaders, technology startups, large enterprises, and thought leaders from the global innovation ecosystem who are rethinking the future to enable what’s next.

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Benefits of data cloud 

The general practice when it comes to data is to lock it behind the walls of each organisation. For instance, a consumer makes a transaction at a shopping centre using a digital payment mode like UPI. The parties involved here would be the seller, the banker, and the payment platform. Each of these players would have individual data on this consumer behind their walls.

This deprives the opportunity to collaborate when it can generate quite a lot of value to every stakeholder. By making use of all of these data sets, each stakeholder would be able to analyse their shopping trends, their creditworthiness and the kind of offering that would meet their needs. 

Global consultancy firm McKinsey & Company pegs this data collaboration to unlock an annual value of $3 trillion worldwide. In fact, there are various traditional methods and mechanisms that have been in use to make it possible. But the challenge is that it can delay the process.  

To make it more simple, Sumeet shares his knowledge on Snowflake platform tools that can be used right from uploading of data, building one’s own engineering platform, categorising the data and monetising it by sharing it with stakeholders that drive better and efficient business using this information. He also shows a demo of how to work on the platform. 

Snowflake Data Cloud is deployed across all three major cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure and Google and it can host data from various third-party data providers, SaaS data and others. The platform also supports computer languages such as Structured Query Language(SQL), JAVA and more.

“The platform allows us to bring content together to process, churn and analyse it for multiple use cases,” added Sumeet.

Sharing of data

Snowflake Data Cloud combines the data, connected together with a high-performance scalable platform, which hosts multiple data workloads to take numerous actions. 

In the Data Marketplace, the data offered is discoverable and accessible to any Snowflake customer. This can be purchased by those who need it and the providers can monetise the data. Another way to share the data is privately across their business ecosystem where the provider can share it with a non-Snowflake customer. 

“There are thousands of organisations sharing data within their ecosystem as well as sharing externally to monetise these data sets,” said Sumeet. 

Over 200 companies are using Snowflake’s platforms to provide data and with more than 800 data sets available belonging to various domains like financials, healthcare, to name a few. 

The US Government uses Snowflake’s Data Marketplace related to COVID-19 which allows various parties such as agencies and individuals to be aware of the spread of the virus in the country. 

Even BlackRock, one of the world’s largest investment companies, uses this platform to share its data on investments with its clients for the purpose of allowing them to make better and well-analysed investment decisions. 

In addition to these tools, Sumeet also shared the various newly added features, one of which is Unstructured Data Management where unstructured data such as photos, videos and voice files can be made accessible through a scoped access - providing restricted access to data without giving access to physical files. 

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For a line-up of all the action-packed sessions at YourStory's flagship startup-tech conference, check out TechSparks 2021 website.