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Snowflake is a cloud-driven data warehouse service that made its debut in 2021. Its founding founders hold a rich history of working for Oracle Corporation. The organization is currently having 2500 employees and offering a warehouse-as-a-service platform, including storage and analytics solutions. Since its debut, Snowflake has scaled up its services with a variety of advanced features and extensions.It incorporates and supports the world’s top three cloud computing services, namely Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. [lwptoc skipHeadingLevel="h1,h4,h5,h6"]As per estimation, Snowflake’s revenues are expected to attain 75% growth by the end of 2022. The business estimates its total target market around $80 billion. Snowflake’s state-of-the-art features give tough competition to its rival services from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.
Top 10 Snowflake Competitors in 2022
Snowflake has also experienced tough war from services like Cloudera, Oracle, Teradata, and IBM. We compiled a list of top 10 Snowflake competitors that you must consider in 2022 as potentially strong rivals to Snowflake. Let’s discuss this in detail.
1. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
AWS is a detailed and most renowned cloud platform that offers end-to-end services, including virtual databases & data warehouse services in 240+ countries globally.AWS incorporates Amazon Redshift and Amazon EMR, giving tough competition to Snowflake in many domains. Amazon Redshift offers a managed services platform for data warehouse needs to simplify the complex functionality of data analysis using mainstream SQL. Businesses leveraging Amazon Redshift can easily analyze their data by integrating it with their existing BI tools and utilities.Amazon EMR also rivals Snowflake’s data processing and distribution services. Amazon EMR is a web-based platform that resolves complex big data challenges seamlessly.
Related: Snowflake vs AWS Athena – Best Data Query Warehouse in 2022
Amazon Web Services holds a significant share of over 30% of the market value. These numbers are enough to give a rich idea about the scale of competition it gives to Snowflake. With AWS, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon EMR, Amazon is undoubtedly the primary threat to Snowflake in the cloud computing market, being a head-to-head rival of Snowflake for a variety of reasons.
2. Microsoft Azure
Microsoft doesn’t require any introduction being a leading IT company that offers hardware, software, and cloud computing service (Azure). The company’s SQL Server gives tough competition to Snowflake in the Relational Database Management Systems (DBMS) domain. SQL platform allows developers to develop effective database solutions and intelligent applications.Microsoft Azure also provides Data Lake services that compete against Snowflake in the big data and data warehousing domain. Microsoft’s robust tools and utilities helped it surpass or match steps with Snowflake in different aspects. However, Snowflake is a much cheaper solution, making it eye candy for most businesses.Whereas, organizations that use Microsoft’s Azure services are more likely to opt for Azure Data Lake services and Synapse Analytics instead of Snowflake, giving Snowflake a bleeding edge in the cloud and analytics domain.
3. Google Cloud
Google is known as a global leader as a search engine platform. Iy provides a multitude of highly scalable services that compete against Snowflake. For instance, Google BigQuery allows users to effectively analyze big data in the cloud environment and perform SQL-like operations against overwhelming datasets within no time. BigQuery offers a storage solution that is less expensive than Snowflake’s storage solution.
Also Read: Snowflake vs BigQuery: Best Cloud Data Warehouse in 2022
As far as the performance is concerned, Snowflake is significantly faster than BigQuery. It takes 8.2 seconds to run a single query. In comparison, BigQuery takes up to 12 seconds, and these differences can cast a great impact if used with gigantic data volumes, although both Snowflake and BigQuery 2.0 incorporate mainstream SQL.BigQuery is a service of the Google Cloud Platform, having 20x more annual revenue than Snowflake, making it one of the top rivals of Snowflake.
4. Cloudera
Cloudera is a cloud-driven data repository solution based on Hadoop. It offers enterprise-grade cloud services in terms of data storage, data processing, and extraction of different formats of data. By the mid of last year, Cloudera was purchased by equity firms for $5.3 billion, and later the company absorbed Datacoral and Cazena in its giant empire. This absorption plan is intended to boost the capability of Cloudera to target more markets in domains like data warehouses and data lakes.
5. Oracle
Oracle is a leading tech giant that provides enterprise-grade storage and cloud solutions via SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS approaches. Oracle Exadata Cloud Service enables a highly flexible, reliable, and budget-friendly solution for all enterprise-grade organization's data warehousing and business intelligence needs.The primary advantage of the Oracle Exadata Cloud platform over Snowflake is its integration with the Oracle Cloud framework, a leading enterprise-scale cloud computing service available in the global market.Renowned organizations including Zoom, McDonald’s, and famous automobile manufacturer Nissan enjoy the perks of having Oracle Cloud services. These giant businesses are likely to prefer the Oracle Exadata Cloud platform over Snowflake. All these services and platforms make Oracle one of the leading Snowflake competitors as the best alternate solutions for enterprise-scale business entities.
6. Teradata
Teradata is another software company that offers modern AI solutions, business intelligence, consulting services, and data warehousing solutions. It offers both on-premise and cloud-based data warehouse services that give tough competition to Snowflake in the storage domain.Teradata’s cloud-based data analytics services are compatible with a hybrid multi-cloud environment that enable its users to resolve the most complex data-related issues up to a remarkable extent.Teradata houses over 8500 personnel as its skilled workforce and operates internationally.
7. IBM
IBM Inc. is another tech giant that manufactures high-quality computer hardware products and software solutions. It operates in over 200 regions globally with a rich history of almost a century in the tech domain. IBM Db2 offers managed services and data warehouse solutions that make it a top performer among Snowflake competitors in data warehousing. IBM Db2 offers enterprise-scale solutions to deal with overwhelming workloads and is fundamentally designed to ensure utmost performance within a reasonable budget. However, due to its low RoI, IBM Db2 is growing at a very sluggish rate to beat Snowflake. IBM’s robust framework and financial indicators give IBM Db2 a cutting edge as a Snowflake competitor.
8. Databricks
Databricks is another software manufacturer that provides cloud services for streamlined data cluster management. With around 2,000 skilled personnel, it supports 5,000 organizations belonging to different niches globally. Databricks also offers open-source platforms like Delta Lake, MLflow, and Koalas, which pull entry-level data analysts before opting for the much more expensive Snowflake. Databricks made a significant move by collaborating with Google Cloud in 2021. Snowflake and Databricks developed compatibility for each other in 2020 after Databricks started supporting SQL Query for data management. This significant move allowed Databricks to be a potential Snowflake competitor in 2022.
9. Apache Druid
Apache Druid is a cloud-based database that supports stream data processing and helps develop intelligent analytical engines at a large scale. This platform is based on Java instead of a standalone data warehouse like Snowflake and other aforementioned Snowflake competitors. At the moment, several top-notch companies like Netflix, Alibaba, and Salesforce are using Druid.Apache Druid is an open-source platform but lacks a true warehouse solution like Snowflake. It’s ideal for fueling end-user analytical solutions. It performs ad-hoc queries faster than Snowflake. All these features make Druid a potential Snowflake competitor.
10. Dremio
Dremio is a startup platform that offers cloud and analytical solutions. This open-source software has the potential to turn data warehouses into outdated frameworks. The feature that gives Dremio such potential is its in-memory software that enables users to perform analytics periodically without having a data warehouse like Snowflake to deal with storage-related problems.The company is all set to invest funds in data lake infrastructure to boost SQL queries' operational capacity and performance. Dremio can help users cut costs by diluting the need for having a data warehouse. It makes Dremio a notable Snowflake competitor in terms of capturing market share up to a significant extent in the short run and threats the existence of Snowflake once users start embracing warehouse-free cloud and analytic solutions like Dremio.
Conclusion
All the above platforms and services we discussed in this article in descending order (as per their competitive nature) are absolute or potential Snowflake competitors in 2022. But the all-rounder nature of Snowflake has allowed Snowflake to secure its position as a leading cloud-based data warehouse platform until now. A future will decide if the competition will favor Snowflake competitors or otherwise.