By: Tom Christensen, Head of Thought Leadership - Nordics, LTIMindtree

There are many reasons to love winter, maybe the snowy days, the delicious flavor of hot cocoa, or the excitement of the upcoming holidays. Last week, we focused on appreciating the beauty of snowflakes and joining visitors from around the Nordics on the Snowflake World Tour in the chilly city of Stockholm.

Empowering data professionals

The Snowflake World Tour is an annual event that gathers 950 data professionals from the Nordic region for a full day of networking, learning, and staying up-to-date with the latest developments from Snowflake. It serves as a platform to showcase the advancements made by Snowflake over the past year, setting the stage for the upcoming year and inspiring attendees to explore how these new features can be integrated into their data solutions. This year’s event was no different, providing valuable insights and sparking ideas for data professionals.

This blog contains experiences gained from engaging with like-minded individuals eager to harness the full potential of data to maximize the benefits of data-driven initiatives.

Exploring case studies!

Before attending the Snowflake event, I had anticipated that the event’s focal points would spin around Data Cloud, Apps, AI, and the integration of large language models (LLM) blended with real-life case studies. My intuition proved to be correct as these topics took center stage. Personally, I was particularly interested in gaining insights from the case studies presented, which showcased how companies have effectively balanced technology, people, and processes within their data-driven organizations to achieve improved outcomes.

A major Swedish commercial manufacturing organization presented their transition towards sustainable transport service by introducing connected electric vehicles (EV trucks) that offer benefits for business, society, and the environment. They highlighted the necessity of digital transformation and data to strengthen competitiveness. They emphasized the need for eliminating data silos and centralizing IT with data management through a unified data-mesh architecture.

My key takeaways

• Data freedom drives business freedom
• Importance of a modern data-mesh architecture to curate and share data
• Agile data mesh architecture for seamless integration
• Real-time, reliable, and predictive decision-making
• Challenges with legacy technical debt and ERP systems
• Business leaders funding and driving digital transformation
• Potential of Generative AI (GenAI) to boost innovation and customer experience

Technology updates

It started earlier this summer with an announcement of the partnership between Snowflake and Nvidia and continued with sessions about building and using AI and LLM models or integrating the existing ones together with Snowflake. Another primary focus is bringing apps to your customers via the Data Cloud. This approach unlocks opportunities for companies to engage with end customers and offer personalized recommendations and guidance as users interact with their products based on insights from various data sources. Snowflake World Tour opened doors for both data and businesspeople.

Key takeaways

• The Native Applications Framework has significant implications for Snowflake customers and partners – it brings your apps to your customers natively in the Data Cloud. Snowflake is becoming a silo buster.
• The biggest announcement – introduction of Snowpark Container Services which allows to run any workload or application in Snowflake by utilizing Docker containers.
• Snowpipe Streaming offers the fastest and most cost-effective method for loading data into Snowflake.
• AI-related announcements – Partnership with Nvidia and integrating first-class LLMs models directly into the platform. The Container Services announcement also enables more flexible model training and serving.
• Introduction of various developer updates – new Snowflake CLI and Python REST API, the Snowpark model registry for ML models, and more.

New opportunities for those who can harness it!

This new Snowflake technology and the potential impact on your data-driven organization can seem daunting to businesses? Where should you begin, and what about the financial aspects of these initiatives? How can you effectively track, enhance, and forecast costs across cloud? Is there a way to automate the cloud migration? Is there a proven framework for accelerating data migration to the new “data cloud” from Snowflake? I’m seeking a well-organized approach to fast-track the migration process and ensure a successful adoption. What does the modern data stack and architecture look like? Additionally, what about data governance? These were the recurring inquiries and concerns voiced by our visitors in the partner area.

During the event, we discussed our PolarSled service designed to speed up the cloud journey. We also discussed our Fosfor software, a solution that brings unique value to the process of transforming data into actionable insights.

The partner area played a pivotal role in the event, offering an excellent opportunity to explore the market and discover new tools that can seamlessly integrate into your technology stack.

Setting GenAI apart: let’s stand out together

While its still early days, visitors were seeking practical use cases for GenAI. To meet this demand, LTIMindtree has crafted a GenAI platform with this objective in mind. We are now extending invitations to clients for an engaging workshop and collaborative testing of use cases with our help, and the results have been highly successful.

Use cases can be productivity improvement, such as code generation for migration to another platform or application modernization in general. Another area is cloud adoption-related modernizations, including data migration to the cloud. We are also exploring content-driven use cases, particularly in marketing processes and campaign management.

We’ve seen up to a 40% to 50% reduction in time and effort for app modernization and cloud migration programs with our GenAI platform called canvas ai. These results are based on experience working with clients and give us confidence that it is achievable for everyone.

The value of networking

Networking has undoubtedly become a paramount aspect for me. The ability to connect with individuals whom I’ve only interacted with virtually throughout the entire year is truly invaluable. It allows for seamless knowledge sharing and provides an opportunity for casual conversations. Moreover, many attendees had the privilege of meeting product managers in person to discuss the latest features or interact with customers presenting case studies during the day.

Personally, I’m looking forward to the opportunity of attending the larger event next year in San Francisco at Snowflake Summit 2024.