After its data-cloud innovations triggered massive disruption in the data-management field, Snowflake last year decided to cause the same level of upheaval in the applications-development world by turning its Data Cloud into an app-dev platform.
Today, that new approach to creating data-intensive applications is sharply differentiating Snowflake’s partners ecosystem strategy as a rapidly rising number of Snowflake customers are unleashing their inner developer selves and are offering powerful new apps within the Snowflake ecosystem.
In this installment of our 7-part Partners Ecosystem Innovation series, Snowflake chief revenue officer Chris Degnan describes how the company’s unique technology and overall strategy are pairing up with innovative customers to create new revenue streams for those customers (and of course for Snowflake) via a new generation of modern data-centric apps.
You can watch my full-length interview with Snowflake CRO Chris Degnan here.
Company Overview: Despite being the smallest company on the Cloud Wars Top 10, Snowflake continues to disrupt far above its weight class: first by triggering the massive “data cloud” phenomenon and causing much bigger tech vendors to react, and more recently by positioning itself as the new data-centric paradigm for applications development. After posting fiscal Q1 product revenue of $555 million, Snowflake said it expects product revenue to grow 44%-45% next quarter.
Register here for your on-demand pass to view all content from Partners Ecosystem Digital Summit. The digital event, which took place on April 20, focused on analyzing the business and IT imperatives around cloud, AI, automation, data modernization, and cybersecurity that define the future of partnerships.
Ecosystem Leader: Chief Revenue Officer Chris Degnan
Ecosystem Position: Degnan is enthusiastic about Snowflake’s ongoing work among global SIs such as Deloitte; tech vendors such as Tableau, Informatica, and Fivetran; and industry-specific specialists. But he was even more excited about the huge opportunity Snowflake is creating as an applications-development platform: “It’s incredible,” he said in our recent interview (you can watch the entire interview here). “In healthcare and life sciences, we’ve got customers like IQVIA who are effectively using Snowflake as a distribution platform for their data.”
Ecosystem Priorities: “I’m looking for out-of-the-box thinking in terms of going after not only your traditional partners but partners that could actually create new ways of servicing their customers better, or creating new revenue streams for different data providers. I mean, some credit-card companies we’re talking to are saying, ‘Geez, we have anonymized data that we could use to actually create advertising products on,’ ” Degnan said. “People are realizing what a treasure trove of data they have, and now they’re saying to us, ‘Snowflake, you can help me monetize that, or improve my customer experience.’ And that’s really what I’m spending an immense amount of energy on.”
Innovation Agenda: When Degnan started at Snowflake 10 years ago as one of the company’s first salespersons, the company’s product line was small and its routes to market were limited as well. But it’s a very different story today. “I give great credit to our founders, because when I was selling Snowflake in the early days, customers would come to us and say, ‘When are you going to run in the private cloud?’ And we’d say, ‘Never.’ So I didn’t have an option, right?” Degnan said. “But they had a vision that is now becoming reality with with the Data Cloud — and the Data Cloud is creating this whole data economy where customers are selling applications in a marketplace, selling data in the marketplace, and it can be easy. If you’re a startup or if you’re a partner, it’s going to be a heck of a lot easier entering into markets with Snowflake as your partner. And I know this because I built the go-to-market here at Snowflake, and I know the challenges associated with that. But what we have now is an incredible opportunity.”
Unique Approach: “We have five core verticals — media, healthcare and life sciences, retail, financial services, and telco,” Degnan said. “And then we have industry experts that align at that level… So that then helps us really hone in on who are the right partners and the right types of use cases that we’re doing. We’re working with a sports agency or sporting tour that’s created a ‘Fan 360’ and they needed to target a specific demographic. So we got together with some of their advertising team for their Fan 360, and we actually identified a data provider in our data marketplace that could add this specific demographic in their space. So that’s the type of thing that keeps me excited to do this even after 10 years because there’s so much innovation yet to happen. And focusing on these verticals is incredibly exciting.”
Big Quote: “Ten years ago, we were just hoping to be a native cloud-data warehouse,” Degnan said. “And never in my wildest imagination did I think we’d be in the situation we’re in now… And what’s exciting now — and it goes back to what we talked about with these ‘Powered By’ partners–is all of a sudden, if you’re going to build an application and have that application actually sit inside of Snowflake, then you no longer have to worry about the things that I had to worry about as a salesperson: you don’t have to worry about loading the customer data and all that. You can just say, ‘Here’s an app — and I’m gonna deploy that app on the Data Cloud.’ And that’s what Snowflake’s intention is to do.”
Get the Full Story: You can watch my full-length interview with Snowflake CRO Chris Degnan here.
