Snowflake Finance VP Says Big Companies Migrate at a Glacial Pace (theregister.com) 18
Snowflake's growth among large enterprise customers faces a significant bottleneck tied to the sluggish replacement cycles of existing on-premises data warehouse systems, according to finance vice president Jimmy Sexton. Speaking at a Jefferies conference, Sexton explained that while the cloud data company secured two deals worth more than $100 million each in the financial services sector during its latest quarter, such migrations unfold over multiple years as "cumbersome projects."
Why is this even an article? (Score:2)
This article is basically the VP of a services company complaining that his company has to deal with customers. If the customers would just work differently, then their job would not be as difficult and they could make more profit with less work.
If wishes were horses....
Re: Why is this even an article? (Score:2)
The answer to the question of "What happens when an actual snowflake becomes a CEO?".
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I suppose in his defense, it didn't sound like complaining, just stating the very blatantly obvious to anyone in the industry.
They are cumbersome projects, and he didn't seem to express that they ever had any misconceptions about it, or even that it is very wrong. When speaking to investors it may be very apt to explain that those "sweet deals" should be perceived with some caution, because the investors are very oblivious and otherwise may start complaining when they see the follow-on expenses hit.
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If the customers would just work differently
Pretty much the complaint of every IT product, service provider or consultant. Make your company process fit our product. It's one thing to have a consultant come in and "clean up" bad work flows. But all too often, they have technology to sell. And then you don't know who's best interest they have in mind.
If wishes were horses....
And this is new why? (Score:3, Interesting)
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So ... why is this a surprise?
That was kind of my initial response as well. I haven't been around as long as you have, but long enough to wonder if this dude has ever worked in a company before. There's a real good reason that things are done slowly and methodically. Some of it can be helped, some of it can't
Re:And this is new why? (Score:4, Informative)
So ... why is this a surprise?
That was kind of my initial response as well. I haven't been around as long as you have, but long enough to wonder if this dude has ever worked in a company before. There's a real good reason that things are done slowly and methodically. Some of it can be helped, some of it can't
it's done methodically and slowly because disruptions in service due to rash actions can lead to loss of revenue. Sometimes to significant loss of revenue.
To act rashly without protection from above is a resume-updating experience.
Back in the day a popular expression was, "Nobody was ever fired for buying IBM." This was because IBM was that slow, methodical process and they tended to maintain strong after-sale support so long as you were paying for it. A place I worked for 20 years when through two lifecycles of the AS/400 / iSeries platform because IBM made it very, very easy, safe, and secure to do this. When they finally chose to go away from the minicomputer model to distributed/virtual on bunches of small VMs clustered on chassis like UCS, they had tons and tons of application problems. Whole functions that the old AS/400 software did were not even considered in the new application and either had to be crash-written or the users told to pound hot sand and find another, often harder way to accomplish their objectives. In a couple of cases they ended up migrating through a couple of different subsequent applications because the original post-AS/400 choice was so awful that it was unworkable.
I would tell this Snowflake corporate exec that the burden of proof rests with him, with his company, to show that it's actually better to go with them than with prior solutions. After all, we know how/that those prior solutions worked.
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Whole functions that the old AS/400 software did were not even considered in the new application and either had to be crash-written or the users told to pound hot sand and find another, often harder way to accomplish their objectives.
I work in the ERP space. The first implementation I was a part of was to replace an AS-400 basedsystem. That project was the basis of my "There's a real good reason that things are done slowly and methodically. Some of it can be helped, some of it can't" comment. The "move fast and break things" methodology doesn't work in the ERP world.
to show that it's actually better to go with them than with prior solutions
I, like I assume you are, won't be holding my breath on that one.
Apt description (Score:4, Insightful)
I like how Snowflake can be used either as an adjective or a noun in the title and still be valid.
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I have my own naming sense doubts about it too.
A snowflake melts and evaporates, and I don't like that association with my financial matters.
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Haha yeah, on my first pass at the title I assumed it was a derogatory adjective - until I saw the company name in the summary. But, surprise surprise, for this story it works both ways!
The Jeffries conference? (Score:3)
Do they have seminars on Jeffries Tubes? Or do they instead pick over the bones of Toys 'R' Us?
IT works for business, not the other way around (Score:2)
SaaS or in house (Score:2)
At any serious scale for data warehousing, you'll save a fortune by hiring one or two data warehouse specialists and doing it in house. Cloud is not a good fit.
If your data warehouse is for compliance and you never expect to look at the data again, the cloud can work fine.
But if you're trying to solve the actual real world analytics issues data warehouse are intended to solve, including real time analytics, the cloud is going to be slow and painful and expensive.
He's not wrong (Score:2)
Even the big companies are frustrated by this.
They observe that small companies can do it quickly. The leaders may even have experience in doing it quickly. But for all this awareness, knowlege and experience, I don't think anyone has been able to solve the problem.
Big companies of course have big systems, which are more complex and take longer to migrate, but it's not only that. The people involved with these systems are understandably hesistant about disruption to a system that currently works (a disrupti
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Maybe the chump should STFU (Score:2)
Nobody from Snowflake [thehackernews.com] should be acting like an authority on anything.
Maybe if the product was more secure.... just saying.