For Snowflake, partners need to invest and be specialized in AI

“Over here in Snowflake, we always say that your AI strategy is only as good as your data strategy. Hence, we need different types of partners to come in and help us,” says Angela Koh, Director, Partner & Alliances, ASEAN at Snowflake.

As Snowflake looks to build its presence in Malaysia by deploying a local instance on the AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) region, its partner ecosystem will play a crucial role in helping customers understand how they can make the most out of this.

In fact, Snowflake continues to rely on its partners in the ASEAN region, as it looks to help customers in their AI journey. To understand more about Snowflake’s partner ecosystem in ASEAN and how they are working with partners, CRN Asia speaks to Angela Koh, Director, Partner & Alliances, ASEAN at Snowflake.

According to Koh, as Snowflake completed its first billion quarter, the results are a clear indication of how the vendor has grown from just a data warehouse company to become an end-to-end AI and data cloud platform that supports customers to do more with their enterprise data.

“In Southeast Asia, it's super exciting. We are making a lot of investment into this region. You will hear a lot more as we go along over the next few months. (This includes the announcement made at Snowflake World Tour Kuala Lumpur). Snowflake is really there to support customers in every step of the way. And of course, we can't do it alone because AI actually really takes an ecosystem, and it really depends on where the customer is at in terms of their journey. Over here in Snowflake, we always say that your AI strategy is only as good as your data strategy. Hence, we need different types of partners to come in and help us,” Koh said.

Working with partners in ASEAN

As a 100% channel first vendor, Koh stated that the partner ecosystem is extremely important because Snowflake works with a variety of partners. This includes local and global system integrators, hyperscalers as well as marketplace partners.

“The marketplace partners, which we call data cloud product partners, is part of the ecosystem that consists of partners who build applications, and they put it on the Snowflake marketplace. And what it means for customers is if they are running on Snowflake, and they need an application for customer 360, just as an example, they can actually just get the application from the marketplace, directly connect to their Snowflake environment and use it. It's ready and it's secure. That's one aspect of the marketplace,” Koh explained.

“If you look at Bright Data in Singapore for example, it supplies a lot of retail information datasets which are all readily available at the click of a button on the marketplace. What the customers can do is take their own data layer with second, third party data in a secure fashion way, to understand better what the market is actually looking at. So, if you take a look at our ecosystem, it's not just the SI, the GSI, the hyperscaler, it's also this whole set of marketplace partners. And I think depending on the need of the customer, different partners will come in to help,” Koh added.

Essentially, Koh believes that it's impossible for anyone to do this alone. And this is why she also believes that Snowflake does this best as they have the same platform that can be used in so many different ways, depending on the customer's needs or depending on how the partner puts it together with their IP and their offering.

At the same time, Koh also highlighted that Snowflake’s recently revamped network resale program now provides new incentives, training investments, and such.

“Our partner ecosystem needs to be very vibrant. It's not just about acquiring a logo, it's also about using all the consultancy workflow and the application at scale. So, we also have this aspect which now incentivizes partners who may not be a big acquisition logo kind of partners, but they are very deep. They go in and uncover new users of the platform. And we incentivize those partners as well. So, we call that a consumption rebate, which is new for us, and we put it in this year. We've also put in partner development funding for partners who support us with that,” she explained.

Its all about investing and becoming specialized

For Koh, as Snowflake looks to grow its presence in the region, partners will also have to look at areas that they truly want to focus on, especially since the whole AI data cloud area has plenty of opportunities from data engineering to data warehouse or even building applications.

“So, some companies will have everything. But I always believe that it's important to differentiate. For example, the minute we think of company A, we know they are a solid platform modernization company with regards to a few of this technology. We are starting to see patterns like this. Another example would be an SI coming up a bit stronger in a certain way. What I hope to see more from our partners is in the competency area and focus as we evolve. We just adapted a little bit of our program. The next phase is where we will also start to look at some of these to help differentiate our partners better with our customers, when they actually work with the ecosystem,” Koh said.

Koh also hopes to see more investment from partners. Stating that this is a similar situation in the cloud space a few years ago, whereby partners who invest early, and learn the tricks would be able go through the hard parts earlier.

“Partners who invest early can be seen to truly benefit in the latter years because of the experience that they have gianed through large scale migration, through projects, through deployment and through just what they've done for the customers. I think partners who are willing to make that investment early, come on board with us, really get into some of that focus areas, I believe that they will benefit. So I hope to see more of the partners coming on and truly understanding the landscape and choosing a few of the areas that you really want to be known for,” she concluded.