Cloud Wars CEO Outlook 2025 with Snowflake's Sridhar Ramaswamy

The Future of AI and Data in 2025:  There's
a lot of excitement and prototyping around AI. "People are
excited that they can ask questions and get real answers instead
of getting the proverbial 10 blue links. I think people see the
promise of things like that. How do you make that work at scale?
How do you make that work in a reliable way, and how do you make
it work in a way that's not expensive?" Ramaswamy shares a recent
experience in India, describing the cost-consciousness of
customers and the focus on making data accessible and valuable.


Shifting Priorities for Snowflake Customers:
 What do customers want? Ramaswamy identifies goals
including empowering business users with data faster and
unlocking the value of unstructured information. In response,
Snowflake is helping customers access and utilize historical
information and build hybrid systems. He notes that SQL enables
easier data transformations and extractions.


Cultural Change and AI Adoption: Cultural change
is required for companies to handle AI. Even within Snowflake,
adopting AI has been a challenging process. Snowflake's
engineering and sales teams are beginning to use AI tools like
Copilot and Cortex, but there's a need for ongoing practice to
fully integrate AI into daily operations. 


The Promise of AI and Data Platforms: AI has the
potential to free up significant time for employees, allowing
them to focus on higher-value tasks. Snowflake aspires to make
data platforms simple and accessible, allowing users to perform
complex tasks with ease. Its consumption model has several
benefits and aligns it with business goals of making more money
or spending less. Companies like Siemens are using chatbots to
improve efficiency and access to information.


Competition and Innovation in the Data Market:
Competition, Ramaswamy says, drives innovation and improves
products. It only strengthens Snowflake, which stands apart due
to its unified platform, tight integration, and ease of use. "If
you create a chatbot with Snowflake, it will automatically obey
all of the access control rules that you have set up. It will
automatically obey all of the data masking that your
administrator has set up." Ramaswamy discusses the challenges of
balancing innovation with maintaining simplicity and efficiency
in Snowflake's product offerings.


Mega Trends and Challenges for Snowflake:
Ramaswamy sees two mega trends for 2025: the rise of
interoperable data formats and the acceleration of AI. Snowflake
is well-positioned to take advantage of these trends through its
end-to-end offerings and data engineering capabilities. However,
there are challenges to maintaining data quality and speed while
innovating rapidly. AI tools like agents must drive real utility
and value for customers.


Data Literacy Initiative: One Million Minds Plus
One: Snowflake has a new initiative aimed at improving data
literacy. Data can be difficult to interpret, and the right
skills are necessary to do so. Snowflake is spearheading an
ambitious program to educate over a million people in data
literacy, free of charge. The initiative includes teaching
concepts like data engineering, data analytics, and using BI
tools and notebooks for interactive analysis.


Excitement for 2025: Sridhar expresses
excitement about the potential for AI and data to drive real
business transformations in 2025. Snowflake will continue to play
a vital role in helping customers become truly data-driven
organizations. Navigating growth, competition, and innovation
while maintaining simplicity and value for customers is key.


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