Four things to look out for at the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit 2024

Snowflake Data Cloud Summit 2024, which is taking place this week, is set against the backdrop of rising interest in AI and data collaboration. While it would be hard to call AI Snowflake’s bread-and-butter, the booming field is reliant on the company’s home turf of data. 

With more than 500 sessions on the agenda, the summit is positioned to offer valuable insights in data and the cloud, as well as more emergent technologies.

Snowflake has made great in-roads in the generative AI space over the last year, having unveiled a slew of plans at its 2023 conference. Since then, however, it's ramped up its activities, having announced the launch of its new enterprise-grade large language model (LLM). 

This year, we can expect the company to build on its plans and further articulate its Ai strategy for 2024 and beyond. 

Here are four things to look out for at the summit.

Artificial intelligence

AI's role in enterprise technology is expanding, particularly in areas like predictive modeling and analytics. The agenda at Snowflake Summit reflects this trend, dedicating over 140 sessions to generative AI and large language models (LLMs).

Even the keynote has an AI glow to it, with Snowflake's CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy being joined by NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang during his keynote. The chip maker has been making a name for itself in the AI space for some time, notably with its GPUs and, more recently, NeMo toolkit for conversational AI.

The two companies announced a partnership at last year’s summit, so it will be interesting to see how this year’s event builds on that.

We will also likely hear more about the company’s recently-released Arctic LLM, which was revealed in April this year.

Data collaboration and privacy

With the rise of data collaboration comes the challenge of maintaining privacy and security. The Snowflake Summit 2024 will delve into privacy-preserving collaboration techniques, addressing the complexities of sharing data without compromising security. Sessions will explore best practices for data governance, ethical AI innovation, and maintaining data quality to ensure trustworthy analytics.

This all comes against an unfortunate backdrop however. 

The company was recently forced to deny its systems had a vulnerability following successful cyber attacks on two customers, Santander and Ticketmaster. Instead, CISO Brad Jones claimed the fault lay with organizations not using two-factor authentication.

While it’s unlikely that the issue will be discussed at the summit – at least not by Snowflake executives – it will doubtless be in the back of some delegates’ minds.

Real-time analytics and streaming data

Real-time data processing is becoming increasingly feasible, prompting businesses across industries to reconsider its value. Advancements in cloud technology and stream processing engines have significantly reduced latency, making it possible to analyze data as it's generated. 

This capability is particularly appealing in sectors like finance, where real-time fraud detection can save millions, or in manufacturing, where instant machine health analytics can prevent costly downtimes. 

With Snowflake’s core business being data warehousing and analytics in the cloud, it’s certain that this will be another area of focus for the conference when taken as a whole, even if it’s not high up the agenda on the keynote.

Customers galore

Every conference features at least some customer case studies, but at Snowflake Summit delegates will be spoilt for choice. Household names like Deliveroo, CNN, and SurveyMonkey are just some of those holding breakout sessions to talk about how they are using Snowflake’s platform in their businesses. 

Notably, however, while the keynote may be wrapped in AI fanfare, these sessions are still firmly rooted in more traditional data management and analytics.

ITPro editorial director Maggie Holland will be attending Snowflake Summit from 3 – 6 June. Click here to catch up on all the news and analysis from the event.