Snowflake CoCo continues to win over partners and customers in Southeast Asia

According to Amy Kodl, SVP, Worldwide Partners at Snowflake, innovations like CoCo and CoWork are making a real difference as it dramatically reduces the time required to build and deploy AI solutions, making innovation much more accessible.

When Snowflake unveiled new capabilities to Snowflake CoCo (which was formerly known as Cortex Code) at its Snowflake Summit 26, the feedback the AI Data Cloud vendor received was beyond its expectations. Snowflake CoCo was proving to be not only popular among customers but also its partner ecosystem as the coding agent allowed users to have a simpler approach towards building workflows.

The new capabilities announced include the availability to bring the CoCo experience across desktop, mobile, and Slack interfaces, meeting builders where they work to build, iterate, and ship without friction. In addition, builders can now let CoCo run tasks autonomously, assist with end-to-end app development and deployment, and help teams deliver production-ready results faster and more securely.

In Southeast Asia, partners and customers are also sharing similar sentiments when using CoCo, according to Amy Kodl, SVP, Worldwide Partners at Snowflake. Kodl, who took over the global role in December 2025, was in Singapore recently to catch up with both customers and partners in the region.

Speaking to CRN Asia exclusively during her visit, together with Angela Koh, Director of Partnerships and Alliances for ASEAN, both leaders shared that partners in the region are very enthusiastic about Snowflake's direction and vision, particularly regarding helping organizations become agentic enterprises.

“Every customer today is being asked to define an AI strategy, and our partners are resonating strongly with our message that trusted, governed, secure data is the foundation for AI. That's where Snowflake plays a critical role. I think what's becoming especially clear is that the companies that will succeed are the ones that can move quickly from experimentation to production. That's where innovations like CoCo and CoWork (which also had new capabilities unveiled at Snowflake Summit) are making a real difference. They dramatically reduce the time required to build and deploy AI solutions, making innovation much more accessible,” Kodl said.

For Koh, Snowflake’s partners in the region are currently being challenged to move projects to production, and the acceleration provided by CoCo has been remarkable for them. Koh shared that in meetings both she and Kodl has with customers and key partners, a common message they heard is that CoCo has been invaluable, helping partners redefine their service strategies and better define how they help customers succeed.

“For instance, while building a demo previously took days, partners can now leverage this tool to spin one up in a matter of hours. This has shifted the narrative toward the 'art of the possible,' while emphasizing the continued necessity of a solid data strategy for customers,” Koh said.

Meanwhile, Kodl added that the key takeaway from their discussions with partners and customers is the acceleration that CoCo provides.

“Partners are being challenged by customers to deliver business outcomes, and the traditional "time and materials" model is shifting. CoCo acts as an enabler, accelerating time-to-value for our customers through our partners. In recent months, we've seen partners achieve acceleration in delivery timelines ranging from 25–26% on the low end, to upwards of 80–85% on the high end. This is music to our ears—it not only accelerates time-to-consumption, but more importantly, delivers value faster to customers, allowing partners to operate more efficiently,” Kodl explained.

What follows is the rest of the interview between CRN Asia and both Kodl and Koh.

What are partners hoping to get more from Snowflake?

Kodl: Enablement is definitely at the top of the list. The pace of innovation at Snowflake—and across AI more broadly—is unprecedented. Partners need to stay current not only on what we've launched, but also on where we're headed. We've invested heavily in enablement through the Snowflake Partner Network and SPN Learn, which now offers hundreds of bite-sized training courses. The challenge is keeping pace with innovation and ensuring new capabilities reach not just partner leadership but also the practitioners delivering projects every day. That's where we continue to focus.

What about Snowflake customers in the region? What do they value most about working with Snowflake, and the tools you are offering?

Kodl: Customers are focused on moving from AI experimentation to production. They want a platform that's secure, governed and trusted. Snowflake has always been known for trusted data management, and that strength carries directly into the AI era. As organizations adopt AI, they want confidence that their data remains secure and governed, with those protections extending into AI workloads. At a time when many organizations are still figuring out which technologies they can trust, customers increasingly see Snowflake as a reliable foundation for their AI strategy.

Koh: One of our reference customers is Japfa, who operates across multiple countries and is one of the region's largest food producers. Its first phase with Snowflake focused on breaking down data silos to create a unified view of operations, which helped improve food safety and consistency across the business. The next phase is even more exciting. Working with our partners (Solutions BI), Japfa is exploring how AI can improve food production, strengthen physical security across its Indonesian farms and develop new intellectual property deployable in other markets. What impressed us most was hearing from the CIO that technology isn't being implemented for its own sake. They rapidly test dozens of ideas with partners, then scale only those that deliver measurable value to farm supervisors and frontline workers. It's a great example of how AI can transform even traditional industries like agriculture when built on a strong data foundation.

That's interesting because Southeast Asia has many industries with large amounts of data, especially in markets like Indonesia and Thailand. How important is Southeast Asia to Snowflake's overall growth?

Koh: We recently reported another strong quarter globally, with revenue growing more than 30% year over year. While we don't disclose regional numbers, ASEAN is growing faster as a region. We're also investing heavily in new markets. We've launched new Snowflake regions on AWS in both Malaysia and Thailand. But expansion isn't just about infrastructure. We're also building local sales, pre-sales and partner teams so we can support customers on the ground. ASEAN has strong opportunities across banking and government, but industries such as food and agriculture are equally important. Companies like Japfa show how technology can help modernize long-established businesses as they prepare for the next generation of leadership.

Are you seeing a similar growth trajectory in your other markets as well, or is this region outperforming? How does this region compare with the other regions where Snowflake operates?

Kodl: I would say our global growth is roughly 30%, and we're seeing an outsized growth in ASEAN compared to our other regions. Publicly available figures show that APJ contributes roughly 6–7% of our overall revenue, yet it delivers a higher growth rate. That's what you'd generally expect from an emerging market. Beyond the company's overall performance, the role our partners play in this region is especially notable. We're seeing even stronger growth in partner-led deals, customer use cases, consumption, and production go-lives. The work happening with partners here significantly exceeds what we're seeing in our more mature markets. That's driven by partners such as major cloud providers like AWS, which continue expanding in the region, as well as strategic partners like SoftwareOne and others that help accelerate customer adoption.

Speaking of partners, is the Snowflake Partner Network continuing to evolve? Are you planning to introduce more changes to make it even more valuable for partners?

Kodl: Absolutely. Globally, the Snowflake Partner Network now includes around 14,000 to 14,500 partners, and we're constantly evolving the program. Last year, we introduced enhanced reseller incentives, and before that we launched SPN Learn. Roughly every six months, we're introducing new capabilities or benefits. It's about setting clear expectations for how partners engage with our ecosystem while ensuring they receive meaningful value in return.

Our biggest focus right now is evolving the Snowflake Partner Network into a CoCo-powered ecosystem. By that, I mean we want all our partners to use CoCo to drive their businesses—whether by accelerating implementation and delivery timelines or by enabling product developers and data providers to build new AI-powered solutions.

We're embedding CoCo more deeply into our partner program, along with new benefits tied to its adoption. We're already piloting this with a select group of partners, and I expect we'll have more announcements in the second half of this year. Ultimately, the goal is to create a CoCo-powered partner ecosystem.

There's been a lot of excitement around CoCo, but is it really a game changer?

Kodl: Yes, it really is. You've probably seen some of the customer and partner testimonials in our recent earnings announcements. Partner after partner has talked about how CoCo is changing their business operations. Fundamentally, CoCo changes how partners build. It gives builders the tools to develop and deliver AI-powered applications much more efficiently, and that's why we believe it's a genuine game changer.

Data pipelines have traditionally been the longest pole in the tent when it comes to delivering business outcomes. AI is dramatically accelerating that process. Some aspects of a project will never change—you still need project management, high-level scoping, use-case definition, requirements gathering, testing, and change management. But the actual build time has accelerated so significantly that we're seeing projects shrink from two years to just two months.

What's interesting is that customers aren't saying, "Great, we've finished in two months instead of two years." Instead, they're asking, "We had a two-year roadmap—what else can we accomplish in that same timeframe?" They're bringing more data onto the platform, tackling additional use cases, and expanding their workloads. Ultimately, it's accelerating Snowflake adoption across the board.

Koh: One of the great things about CoCo is that every one of us can use it in our day-to-day work. For example, I regularly monitor how our partners are performing—new deal registrations, emerging use cases, which partners haven't submitted a deal registration in the past three months, and so on. Previously, I had to open multiple reports and manually pull all that information together. Today, I simply open CoCo, ask it questions in natural language, and it retrieves the information for me. I can even schedule recurring tasks, such as generating and sending me that report every week. It saves a tremendous amount of time.

If you speak to our finance team, they'll tell you they're using it in similar ways, tailored to their own workflows. What makes this especially powerful. It's not just about querying data—it understands the business context behind your questions. When I ask for "ASEAN," it knows exactly which markets I'm referring to. When I mention "FY," it understands whether my fiscal year starts in January, March, or another month. That business understanding is what really sets Snowflake apart.

It's not only about having all your data on a strong foundation; it's about having a semantic layer that understands the language of the business, while operating within secure governance and access controls. That's critical for enterprise AI. We're hearing this consistently from our partners as well. Many of them are already downloading CoCo and Cowork and using it themselves, simply talking to their data in natural language and seeing immediate productivity gains.

With so much data involved, are customers—particularly those handling sensitive information—raising concerns about data sovereignty, residency requirements, and security when adopting these AI tools?

Kodl: Yes, those questions do come up, particularly from government agencies and organizations with strict regulatory requirements around data residency and sovereign cloud. That said, we've addressed the vast majority of those requirements through our existing cloud partners. Working closely with the hyperscalers has allowed us to meet most customers' needs with our current offerings. While sovereign cloud requirements do arise from time to time, they're relatively limited, and we've generally been able to solve those challenges.

Koh: One of our biggest advantages is our close partnership with the hyperscalers. Take our recent launches in Malaysia and Thailand as examples. As those cloud regions come online, Snowflake runs directly within them, helping customers meet local data residency requirements. Another strength is our ecosystem.

In Malaysia, for instance, we launched with YTL AI Labs' Malay language model. That's particularly relevant because it enables organizations to build AI experiences in Bahasa Malaysia while keeping the data within the country. The model runs on Snowflake and AWS, allowing customers to meet both localization and sovereignty requirements. Just as importantly, Snowflake's architecture ensures that the data remains within the customer's environment. We don't move the data to the AI—the AI is brought to where the data already resides. That's a fundamental principle of how we approach enterprise AI.

With all this momentum and growth, what's next for Snowflake? What are you most excited to achieve?

Kodl: From my perspective, the biggest opportunity now is to take the innovation coming out of Snowflake and our product organization and turn it into real business outcomes for customers. The industry is moving beyond experimentation and into production. The focus now is on solving specific industry use cases, addressing real business challenges, and delivering measurable outcomes. Our job is to demonstrate not just what the technology can do, but how it can be implemented to solve those problems. We have an internal saying: don't just tell—show. That's really where our focus is today.

The great thing is that we can now demonstrate what's possible so quickly because the tools are readily available. You're no longer constrained by needing a large team of developers or waiting months for something to be built. The only real limitation is your imagination. The art of the possible is literally at your fingertips.

For us, the biggest challenge now is awareness and enablement—making sure our partners understand the latest innovations and are equipped to bring them to customers. Once that's in place, it's really about executing effectively across each region.

Koh: I think the vision is very much the same in ASEAN, but the context is different. We've launched in several new markets recently, so our priority is making the technology relevant to local customers, local partners, and local business needs. The overall strategy—partner enablement and ecosystem development—remains the same, but it has to be executed market by market.

We're living through a pivotal moment in technology with AI. Every day there's something new. Our job is to help partners understand the technology itself, how to position it, and how to apply it to real customer challenges in their own markets. That's the work ahead of us across Asia. As we expand into new countries, our priority is to build strong ecosystems—not just broad ecosystems, but deep ones. Different partners bring different strengths. Some focus on resale, others on services or implementation, while in markets like Malaysia we'll also work with local partners that have deep local expertise. Building the right mix of partners is critical to our long-term success.

You mentioned earlier that Snowflake already has more than 14,000 partners globally. Given the momentum around AI and the opportunities you're describing, are you looking to bring more partners into the ecosystem as well?

Kodl: Our global strategy centers on focus. We have around 14,000 to 14,500 partners worldwide, but only about 10% of them are tiered partners within our program. Like every company, we have finite resources, so we have to prioritize. Our focus is on partners that are investing in Snowflake, and actively helping drive customer success. That said, we're seeing tremendous inbound interest. Every day I receive multiple enquiries from organizations wanting to join the Snowflake Partner Network. We're also deliberately recruiting partners in new markets such as Thailand and Malaysia. We're working closely with AWS to identify the right local partners—those with strong customer relationships, local language capabilities, market knowledge, and the right legal and business presence. That's the kind of ecosystem we aim to build as we continue expanding across the region. We already have a large ecosystem. What's more important is having the right partners—those that serve the right markets and are committed to building with us. As we expand into new geographies, we'll continue to recruit strategically, but it's about quality and focus, not simply growing the numbers.

Angela, you mentioned Malaysia and Thailand, but what about the rest of Southeast Asia? How is partner growth looking across the region?

Koh: It's been very positive. Last year alone, we added well over a three figure number of new partners across Asia through the Snowflake Partner Network, this is significant. Like Amy said, we welcome all partners through programs such as SPN and SPN Learn. But we also have to focus our investments on partners that are committed to growing with us and embracing the full breadth of what Snowflake offers.

There's certainly no shortage of interest. I receive enquiries almost every day from organizations looking to partner with us. The challenge isn't attracting partners—it's deciding where to invest our time. That's why we have an acceleration team that helps qualify and onboard new partners. Think of them as our scale organization. They handle program enquiries, while our dedicated partner managers work closely with our tiered partners on strategic planning, go-to-market initiatives, and long-term business development. Overall, the momentum across Southeast Asia is very encouraging.

For the partners you're prioritizing, what do you hope to get most from them?

Koh: First is scale. In ASEAN, many of the regional systems integrators may be headquartered in Singapore, but they have teams across Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and other markets. That regional footprint is incredibly valuable because it allows us to scale across multiple countries through a single partner.

Second, many of these partners also work closely with the hyperscale partners. That alignment helps us collaborate more effectively across the ecosystem and jointly serve customers. Beyond scale, we're also looking for deep domain expertise. In Thailand, for example, we've partnered with firms that specialize in manufacturing. Manufacturing is a major industry there, and these partners understand the sector inside out. They may not be the best fit for every customer, but they're exactly the right fit for manufacturing organizations.

So it's really about striking the right balance between broad market coverage and specialized expertise. We want partners that can help us acquire customers, go to market effectively, deliver successful implementations, and support customers alongside the hyperscalers.

The third area is capability. We value partners with strong change management expertise because that's something customers consistently tell us they need. The technology itself may be excellent, but helping business users adopt new ways of working is often the hardest part. Our partners play a critical role in driving that organizational change.

Finally, we're looking for partners with deep technical skills—people who can integrate different enterprise systems, build solutions around CoCo, and tailor those capabilities to each customer's environment. It's really a combination of scale, industry expertise, change management and technical depth.

Amy, from a global perspective, what are you hoping to get from your partners? You're investing heavily in them—what do you expect in return?

Kodl: I think about it in a few key areas. First and foremost is capability. We want our partners to build deep Snowflake expertise. In fact, we had a partner speak to our leadership team recently, and honestly, he could probably sell Snowflake better than we could. That's our North Star—we want partners that truly understand the platform, know how to articulate its value, and can turn that value into real outcomes for customers.

The second area is co-selling. We want partners bringing their customer relationships and market reach together with our technology and expertise. The best outcomes happen when we're working side by side in front of customers, combining our strengths to demonstrate how Snowflake can solve real business problems. That's really what we're looking for: partners with the capability, customer relationships, and commitment to grow the business together.

The third area is implementation. It's one thing to identify great use cases, but it's another to deliver them successfully. We look for partners with proven implementation capabilities—partners that can execute efficiently, deliver high-quality outcomes, and help customers get into production quickly.

The final area is the ability to translate what is essentially a horizontal technology platform into industry-specific solutions. Snowflake has a broad range of capabilities, but customers want to know how those capabilities solve their particular business challenges.

That means speaking the customer's language, understanding the nuances of their industry, and connecting our technology with their existing systems, business processes, and terminology. It's about bringing industry expertise to the table and turning our platform into practical solutions for specific use cases. Those are the capabilities that really complement our technology foundation.

That brings me to my final question. I know you've had the opportunity to meet some of your partners during this visit, but you can't meet everyone. If you had one message for your partners across the region, what would it be?

Kodl: I have one very simple message: if you haven't tried CoCo yet, you absolutely need to. Back home in California, where I live, we have a billboard that says, "Go loco for CoCo." It's catchy, but it captures how people feel once they start using it.

Once you get hands-on with CoCo, the possibilities seem almost limitless, making it difficult to imagine working without it. So if I had one ask of our partners, it would be this: adopt CoCo. We want every partner using it because if our partners understand it and build with it, they're in the best position to help every customer do the same.

Experiment with it. Learn how it fits into your business. Figure out how it can create value for your customers. I genuinely believe it's a game changer.