Snowflake: “We want to be the iPhone of data applications”

Snowflake today confirmed that its Native App Framework is now in public preview on AWS in a bid to make it easier for developers to build, distribute and monetize apps. 

The firm used the second day of its annual Snowflake Summit in Las Vegas to highlight how more than 25 new native apps are now available from within its Marketplace and encourage more app creators to get involved. 

With baked in security and governance, Snowflake claims this latest move provides app developers with the building blocks they need to quickly and easily create robust applications that will drive business success. This provides a speedy path to monetization because end customers can then install said apps without having to expose and/or move their data.

“Our vision at Snowflake always was to democatrize data to anyone. And we discovered very quickly that if we wanted to democratize data to everyone that it had to be done through apps,” said Benoît Dageville, Snowflake’s co-founder and president of product. 

“Therefore, we have to make it super simple to build these applications, to develop them, to run them and  scale. Our platform should take care of a lot of aspects of running [these apps] and provide all the capabilities the application requires. 

Distribution of these applications is critical… Distribution and monetization. We want to make Snowflake the iPhone of data applications.”

Dageville expanded on his iPhone analogy in a press Q&A session earlier this week, highlighting the fact that Apple-developed apps are not - in the main - what draws people to continue to use these devices. 

“When you say ‘My iPhone can do that. I can book my trip on United airlines.’Yes, your iPhone can do that, but it’s probably not Apple that wrote the application,” he said. 

“If you asked Steve Jobs ‘Will the iPhone be used to book tickets?’ He would have said ‘no, yes’ or ‘I don’t know’ so that’s what I’m going to say [about native apps with Snowflake] as the possibilities are infinte. 

“We want to make our platform very extensible via our ecosystem and third-party products. If the iPhone only had Apple applications you would not use your iPhone. The benefit of the platform is going to come from this extensibility. The most important aspect is this native app framework that we are developing so everyone can expand the possibilities of Snowflake directly inside the platform.”

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) is one of the initial native apps designed to make it easier and more effective to model and predict industry scenarios and better navigate market events and associated risk factors. 

Others bringing native apps to the table initially include Bond Brand Loyalty, Capital One Software, LiveRamp, Matillion, and My Data Outlet.