Increasing collaboration and monetization of data products: an interview with Snowflake
To maximize the value of their data and effectively monetize it internally and externally Chief Data Officers (CDOs) and other data leaders need to build an agile, interoperable data stack. This has to integrate data, wherever it is stored and create seamless end-to-end flows that make it available as easily-consumable, business-focused data products to internal and external users, shared through our data product marketplace solution.
Opendatasoft therefore partners with leading technology providers, such as Snowflake, the AI data cloud company, to help our joint customers maximize business value from data. We caught up with Maxime Simon from Snowflake to talk about how our combined solution enables collaboration and monetization of data products.
What challenges do data leaders face?
Snowflake: Organizations are now generating enormous volumes of data, which are growing all the time. However, often this data remains stuck in silos within the company and cannot be accessed by business users. This leads to four key challenges. Firstly, data is not delivering value, and secondly this lack of access means that the organization doesn’t develop a data culture – essentially, business users aren’t confident in integrating data into their working lives.
It also brings two issues on the technical side – data is not managed efficiently, pushing up costs and data teams are unable to demonstrate results or ROI from their programs. These challenges are becoming even more critical given the rise of AI – organizations need seamless access to data for Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI agents if they are to truly benefit from this breakthrough technology.
How does Snowflake help overcome these obstacles?
Snowflake: Snowflake is the AI data cloud company and we firmly believe that when it comes to data sharing, software architecture matters. Businesses are increasingly building enterprise data strategies with collaboration – both internally and externally – in mind. They want to remove the technology bottlenecks to data discovery and access as more and more complex questions are asked. Importantly, they also want to control and monitor access to data.
They want to create consumable, high-value data products that can be used across their ecosystem.
With Snowflake we are enabling customers to take a domains and data mesh approach: each team in the organization has ownership over their own domain. They have the power and responsibility to maintain their own datasets. The technology allows teams to implement their own best practices to prepare their data while having a common platform of storage and execution. Having one common database technology which scales very well ensures datasets remain accessible easily.
The aim is to deliver an unconstrained self-service experience, enabling the querying of a single instance of data, in any language, with a single layer of data governance.
There is direct access to usable data and AI products while protecting sensitive data, the ability to discover data and AI products from internal teams, partners, vendors and customers, and streamlined procurement across evaluation, payment and data delivery.
All of this enables collaboration in the AI Data Cloud, both internally and externally, solving the business and technical challenges of data monetization and ensuring ROI.
How does Snowflake work with Opendatasoft?
Snowflake: Opendatasoft’s data product marketplace enables the business consumption of data at scale, providing an intuitive, self-service experience that connects business users with the data products and data assets they need in a seamless, centralized space.
We work closely with Opendatasoft through a two-way integration thanks to dedicated, off-the-shelf connectors that ensure data is always up to date. This leverages the full power of our joint capabilities, enabling organizations to harness the entire value proposition of learning, building, and connecting all the way through to the consumption of data products by business users at scale via a seamless, self-service experience.
As the diagram below shows, this means that clients can connect all of their teams to the data they need, extending data consumption beyond technical teams to drive usage and democratize insights. Barriers to usage are broken down through Opendatasoft’s powerful features, including the ability to create AI-generated data visualizations, custom views and to request data via APIs.
What are the benefits of the partnership on a technical level?
Snowflake: Organizations want to create, share and promote data products to their users in order to drive data monetization and collaboration. At a technical level our partnership streamlines the production, sharing and management of data products. Customers can build and package data products directly from the Opendatasoft solution using data stored in Snowflake, creating impactful data products and data assets.
Data is fully virtualized and read directly from the source, enabling storage rationalization, greater efficiency and a lower carbon footprint, all while delivering the same experience to end users.
Essentially, through the integration data and IT teams benefit from an efficient, flexible, and scalable architecture that removes technology bottlenecks and provides access to data in a secure and governed way. This results in an intuitive, end-to-end experience for users and greater technology productivity and ROI.
How does this help to monetize data and generate value?
Snowflake: Together, our integration delivers value in three key ways:
Greater efficiency
We reduce the operational burden and costs associated with solution discovery, integration, data replication and deployment across regions and clouds, increasing efficiency.
Strong governance:
Built-in governance enables customers to unlock value from sensitive data with granular access and privacy controls, sharing insights while protecting confidentiality and ensuring compliance.
Streamlined procurement of data products
Data is monetized effectively through streamlined procurement – companies can easily buy and sell data, apps, and AI products through self-service and unified billing capabilities. This drives internal improvements, greater collaboration and creates new revenue streams. Data can be shared with partners and customers, even if they are not using Snowflake themselves.
Learn more about how Snowflake and Opendatasoft unlocks value from your data by watching a replay of our webinar. Featuring a product demo it explains how to transform your data into valuable, monetizable products, enable seamless data sharing and collaboration with key stakeholders and leverage a data marketplace to accelerate innovation and create new revenue opportunities, all while overcoming challenges related to data governance, accessibility, and security.
