Sushrit Moundekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Program Manager at InfoCepts
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
A scalable and cost-effective solution that stores data streamed from the source system
Pros and Cons
  • "The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power."
  • "Currently, Snowflake doesn't support unstructured data."

What is our primary use case?

We use Snowflake as a database to store all the data we stream from the source system.

What is most valuable?

The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power. If I want to change the computation with other tools like Netezza, I would have to add a hard disk to it. With Snowflake, being on the AWS side, changing warehouses provides me with faster execution of my queries.

What needs improvement?

The real-time streaming feature is limited with Snowflake and could be improved.

Currently, Snowflake doesn't support unstructured data. With Snowflake, you need to be very particular about the type of data in your source systems. It has to be in a proper structure. You cannot push data to Snowflake in any possible way.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Snowflake for a couple of years.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Snowflake is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Around 400 users are using the solution in our organization.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used IBM Netezza. We switched to Snowflake in 2020 because it provided us control over its scalability and costing model.

How was the initial setup?

The solution’s initial setup is comparatively easier.

What was our ROI?

Snowflake is a cloud-based, scalable solution that provides strong data security. Handling all the data is much easier in Snowflake, and it has a very nice interface to control user access. The administration of Snowflake is also comparatively easier.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Snowflake is a cost-effective solution.

What other advice do I have?

Choosing Snowflake completely depends on the quantum of data your organization has and the requirements. Snowflake is suitable for someone looking for a scalable and cost-effective solution that provides quick analysis.

Overall, I rate Snowflake a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 10
Increases productivity, is stable, and scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "Snowflake is faster than on-premise systems and allows for variable compute power based on need."
  • "Snowflake can improve its machine learning and AI capabilities."

What is our primary use case?

In our organization, data is often spread out over multiple on-premise and cloud-based platforms. Snowflake is an agnostic platform, meaning it can be used regardless of which cloud provider we use and can serve as a single source for all of our data. Our use case then is to ensure that all data is located in one place, utilizing Snowflake as the platform.

How has it helped my organization?

With Snowflake, productivity can be increased. Snowflake is faster than on-premise systems and allows for variable compute power based on need. We are currently experimenting with ways to reduce processing time from eight hours to six hours or even less.

What is most valuable?

The vendor claims that the provision of warming sensors quickly enables warmth to compute nodes, which is their Unique Selling Point. From my experience, this has proven to be true.

What needs improvement?

For the past year and a half, I have experimented with different proof of concept. I have wanted to use Snowflake, however, I have not been able to do so. Microsoft Azure is superior to Snowflake in terms of its machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities. Snowflake has its own unique products, but Azure surpasses it in those areas. Snowflake can improve its machine learning and AI capabilities.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for one and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I found that Snowflake is highly stable, which is a reflection of the quality of its network.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have gone to the extremes from a scalability perspective and I give Snowflake's scalability an eight out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

As a premium customer for all these solutions, we have received excellent support overall with no issues encountered thus far. However, it is possible that some users of the free version may be experiencing some issues. I cannot confirm this, but from my experience, there have been no difficulties.

How was the initial setup?

I give the initial setup a seven out of ten for ease and time required.

What about the implementation team?

We are leveraging Snowflake, a cloud-based platform, both independently and in collaboration with the vendor. Our objectives for utilizing Snowflake are distinct from those of the vendor.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Comparing Snowflake to on-prem options such as Oracle or SAP, it seemed more cost-effective. With Vantage, a one-time purchase allows for use as many times and to a large capacity, whereas Snowflake, Azure, and similar services become increasingly expensive as the scale increases. Determining the best point of cost-effectiveness requires further study.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have tested all the different alternatives to Snowflake as well. It is hard to determine which one is the most suitable, as each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

What other advice do I have?

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

Deciding between Azure Synapse and Snowflake can be difficult, as the best choice depends on one's own use case. Ultimately, it comes down to the available connectors; the product with more connectors is likely the better option. When making a decision, one should consider which other sources they would want to get data from and where they want to send data to. This can help inform their product selection.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
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Vinoth Raj Prabhakaran - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Architect at Tata Consultancy Services
Real User
High performance, scalable, and simple setup
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of Snowflake are its performance and power."
  • "Snowflake could improve if they had an Operational Data Store(ODS) space."

What is our primary use case?

Snowflake is used for data warehousing.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of Snowflake are its performance and power.

What needs improvement?

Snowflake could improve if they had an Operational Data Store(ODS) space.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Snowflake for approximately four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of Snowflake is good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of Snowflake is very good.

I have approximately six customers using this solution but in addition, I am directing more.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support from Snowflake was poor previously, they have improved significantly.

How was the initial setup?

Snowflake has an easy setup and it is quick.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There is a license needed to use this solution. There are a few licensing options available. They have a pay-as-you-go option, but it is recommended to pay upfront.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Snowflake a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
Reasonably priced solution but credit performance could be improved
Pros and Cons
  • "The features I found most valuable with this solution are sharing options and built-in time zone conversion."
  • "I see room for improvement when it comes to credit performance. The other thing I'd like to be improved is the warehouse facility."

What is our primary use case?

Our current plan and use case for this solution is to migrate the data from on-premises to the cloud. We are currently using on-prem monitor data and providing it on the cloud. We are using Snowflake so that once the data is in there, we are trying to create shares over it so that external systems can't consume it.

What is most valuable?

The features I found most valuable with this solution are sharing options and built-in time zone conversion.

What needs improvement?

I see room for improvement when it comes to credit performance. The other thing I'd like to be improved is the warehouse facility. 

In the next release, I'd like to see easier connectivity to the on-premises tools.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

My impression from using this product for the last three years is that it is quite stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

My impression is that this is a scalable solution. There are around 200 users of this solution at our company, including three administrators.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup process was not that complex and it took around six months.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was done by an in-house team.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

My impression is that the pricing of this solution is reasonable.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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BI & BIG DATA Director at Malam-Team
Real User
A good platform that can handle structured and semi-structured data and is very fast to implement and integrate
Pros and Cons
  • "It is a very good platform. It can handle structured and semi-structured data, and it can be used for your data warehouse or data lake. It can load and deal with any data that you have. It can extract data from an on-premises database or a website and make it available in the cloud. It has very fast implementation and integration as compared to other solutions. There is no need for the DBA to manage or do the day-to-day DBA tasks, which is one of the greatest things about it."
  • "In future releases, it can also support full unstructured data."

What is our primary use case?

We implement this solution for our customers. It is a cloud data warehouse. It is SaaS, and it can be run on Azure, AWS, or something else. We are using its latest version.

What is most valuable?

It is a very good platform. It can handle structured and semi-structured data, and it can be used for your data warehouse or data lake. It can load and deal with any data that you have. It can extract data from an on-premises database or a website and make it available in the cloud.

It has very fast implementation and integration as compared to other solutions. There is no need for the DBA to manage or do the day-to-day DBA tasks, which is one of the greatest things about it.

What needs improvement?

In future releases, it can also support full unstructured data.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It has very good scalability. Your data can grow in the platform. We have at least 50 users of this solution in an organization.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their vendor is wonderful. I only have good words for them.

How was the initial setup?

It is not too complex. Its implementation is easy even for those people who don't know Snowflake and are coming from other environments, such as Oracle or SQL Server.

It can be implemented very quickly. Our customers in Israel implemented it very quickly. It was much faster to implement than other platforms.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is on a monthly basis. It is based on your usage. There are no additional costs from the point of the licensing fee.

We do give some kind of evaluation to the customers about how much it is going to be. You can decide in Snowflake the virtual machine that you are using for customers. There are several kinds of virtual machines that you can use. It is similar to the clothing sizes: small to extra large. If you need more power in the coming month, you can decide in advance and take a more powerful machine. You can just select it from the platform. You can also decide which machine you want to take for extracting data.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise others to check themselves how fast its implementation can be and how responsive it is. I would also recommend evaluating it before choosing other solutions, such as Microsoft Synapse or Amazon Redshift. You can test it yourself by using a test case. You can try to load the data on each platform, which can take a few weeks, but you will get to know the advantages of this solution. It is very different from other solutions.

I would rate Snowflake a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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IT Consultant at Independent Consultant
Consultant
Top 20
Straightforward deployment, stable, and scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "Snowflake has three great features: Snowpiping is proving to be very valuable, Time Travel is excellent, and Snowpipes are another great functionality the solution has made available."
  • "Snowflake needs transparency over costs and pricing."

What is our primary use case?

I mostly build or design data warehouse analytics solutions using Snowflake.

How has it helped my organization?

The productivity across the teams that use Snowflake I believe is higher than it would be without the solution.

What is most valuable?

Snowflake has three great features: Snowpiping is proving to be very valuable, Time Travel is excellent, and Snowpipes are another great functionality the solution has made available.

What needs improvement?

Snowflake needs transparency over costs and pricing.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I give the stability an eight out of ten. We rarely have issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I give the scalability an eight out of ten.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used many on-premise solutions in the past and also Azure Synapse Analytics.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. I give the setup an eight out of ten.

A basic implementation is quick and we only have to set up Snowflake and the cloud service. We need one engineer and one designer for the implementation.

What about the implementation team?

Depending on the complexity of the implementation, we may need to use a third party or help from the vendor.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Part of the problem with the pricing is that it is very difficult for businesses to get an idea of how expensive it might be until they actually start using Snowflake. Until they start pushing large amounts of data through, we will not really know. I believe that it is very difficult for businesses to make a commitment.

What other advice do I have?

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

My advice is to start Snowflake and not spend too much time thinking about how we could use the solution or what it could be used for. The key is just getting started.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Hussain Modu - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Real User
Allows us to connect to the database and import required tables into our system
Pros and Cons
  • "This is the advanced version of the cloud version, so it's really a flexible tool. If you have it implemented at home, you can access it from anywhere."
  • "These aren't as crucial, but there are common errors sometimes where the database is down, or a table is nullified and a new table is added and you are not given access to that. With those errors, you don't have permissions."

What is our primary use case?

We're using Snowflake for Power BI Cloud. We had a cloud version of Snowflake, so we were connecting to the Snowflake database and importing required tables into our system, Power BI Desktop. From there, we linked those tables and created a semantic layer, an internal layer between the frontend and backend, and then we tuned the data. Then we used both the tables to tie into the dashboards that we developed. The dashboards show the sales information or marketing information.

It's a cloud solution.

What is most valuable?

I like the entire database. This is the advanced version of the cloud version, so it's really a flexible tool. If you have it implemented at home, you can access it from anywhere.

What needs improvement?

Sometimes when I'm trying to refresh the data, my different application or tool has to connect to its backend database through the connection I create. Sometimes, I face some issues like not having permissions. These aren't as crucial, but there are common errors sometimes where the database is down, or a table is nullified and a new table is added and you are not given access to that. With those errors, you don't have permissions.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Snowflake for a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good. It handles a lot of data, and the processing speed is very high.

How was the initial setup?

It's straightforward. You have to have a rule, database names, and a schema name.

When somebody deploys it and gives me the URL and the required tables to use, I use the URL and configure it from the frontend side, reporting side that could be more like Power BI or Tableau, and I start using it.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Sanjay Bheemasenarao - PeerSpot reviewer
Director - Data Engineering expert at Sankir Technologies
Real User
Amazingly simple documentation, easy setup, and user-friendly
Pros and Cons
  • "It is a very easy-to-use solution. It is user-friendly, and its setup time is very less."
  • "They have a new console, but I couldn't figure out anything in the new console. So, if I shift to the old console, I can figure out where to create the database schema and other things, but I have no idea where to go in the new console. That's one thing they can improve. I don't know why they created a new console to confuse. The old, classic console is much better."

What is our primary use case?

I use this solution to create a proof of concept. I also create training for companies on Snowflake.

What is most valuable?

It is a very easy-to-use solution. It is user-friendly, and its setup time is very less.

What needs improvement?

They have a new console, but I couldn't figure out anything in the new console. So, if I shift to the old console, I can figure out where to create the database schema and other things, but I have no idea where to go in the new console. That's one thing they can improve. I don't know why they created a new console to confuse. The old, classic console is much better.

For how long have I used the solution?

I started using Snowflake three months ago. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

It is so easy that I didn't have to look for technical support. Its documentation is amazingly simple.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I also use Databricks for proof of concept and training. I have used Databricks much longer than Snowflake. Both have their own pros and cons.

In terms of ease of use, UI, and setup time, Snowflake is good. I would rate Snowflake a nine out of 10 from these aspects. In terms of workload, Databricks has higher points. The underlying infrastructure is faster for Databricks, which is not the case with Snowflake. Snowflake is a cloud database. So, in terms of processing power, Databricks has an advantage over Snowflake. Databricks is more suitable for larger workloads, whereas, for a regular or typical data warehouse that you want to run on the cloud, Snowflake is more suitable. 

How was the initial setup?

Its setup was easy. You can create a connection and be up and running within half an hour.

What about the implementation team?

I set it up myself.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I have not been billed yet, but it should be less. I'm still running the trial version, but it seems to be less than Databricks.

What other advice do I have?

You must try it out. It is a wonderful product. I would also recommend trying out other products, such as Yellowbrick, and doing a comparison. Redshift has also come up with some serverless options. BigQuery is also there. BigQuery is as easy as Snowflake. So, my recommendation or advice is to try out these things and then pick the one that suits you. I don't have any bias towards any of the products. I have an impartial opinion about all the cloud data warehousing products.

I would rate it a nine out of 10.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Updated: May 2024
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Download our free Snowflake Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.