Snowflake Partner Lead Kodl Calls Channel Investment ‘A Priority’

‘We’re looking really at the partners that tier with us, which means we’re selling together. We’ve got joint work. They’re investing in certifications and talent and then moving up those tiers,’ says Snowflake Interim Alliances and Channel Lead Amy Kodl.

Snowflake Interim Alliances and Channel Lead Amy Kodl revealed that Snowflake’s partner ecosystem continues to grow at a staggering clip, with the artificial intelligence and data cloud vendor surpassing 12,600 total partners worldwide, about 30 percent growth year over year.

The Snowflake Partner Network only had about 600 partners in 2022. But Kodl (pictured) told CRN in an interview that the Bozeman, Mont.-based vendor is also investing in a deeper relationship with partners, surpassing 36,000 partner credentials and 3,000 Snowflake Marketplace listings.

“There’s a lot more coming [for channel partners] that we’re really excited about,” said Kodl, who took over global channel responsibilities for Snowflake after Tyler Prince’s departure earlier this year. “It’s a huge priority for us.”

[RELATED: Snowflake Acquisition Expands Postgres Capabilities Of Its AI Data Cloud]

Snowflake Partner Network Growth

Phil Andriyevsky, partner and leader of the financial services AI and data business at London-based Snowflake partner EY, told CRN in an interview that the firm is doubling down on its Snowflake practice, with the vendor’s highly connected ecosystem differentiating it among enterprises that work with multiple vendors and want greater integration by AI companies.

A lot of the firm’s work with customers has included reducing copies of data and creating customer data estates that humans, AI agents and SaaS applications can all leverage, he said. EY has also been leveraging AI internally to take its tax, consulting, auditing and other practices to a new level.

“The firm is taking Snowflake extremely seriously,” Andriyevsky said. “This partnership is four years old now and clearly one of our top partners based on the strength of the relationship, based on the strength of numbers.”

Customer investment in AI has stayed strong even amid global economic uncertainty as countries negotiate tariffs, he said. Developer productivity, voice data in call centers, and deals and documents data are three key areas where EY is using AI to boost productivity for its customers.

“AI has become an event that is creating nondiscretionary spend for our clients,” he said.

Here’s more of what Snowflake’s Kodl had to say.

What should Snowflake partners know about how your ecosystem is growing and developing?

I’m really excited to spend more time with our data cloud product partners, our cloud partners, our strategic partners. And we’re making some pretty great strides with our new CRO [Mike Gannon, who became Snowflake’s CRO in March] coming on board in terms of investing in the channel.

There’s a lot more coming [for channel partners] that we’re really excited about. It’s a huge priority for us. And Mike Gannon comes from a channel-heavy business in his background [Gannon’s resume includes president of Americas sales at VMware by Broadcom, senior vice president and general manager of the Americas at VMware pre-acquisition and district manager at EMC].

We’ll see a lot more investment in the future around the alliances and channels organization and our partners.

We just surpassed 12,000 partners—12,600 partners—growing almost 30 percent year on year.

Our top partners are really investing and growing at a much faster clip. Many are doubling their practice sizes year on year, which is exceeding that 30 percent growth. Their services revenues are growing incredibly.

Their investment in capability and skills in the form of credentials, that talent grew 44 percent last year. We have over 36,000 partner credentials now. That’s both our technical certifications and then our accreditations as well. Our marketplace listings are now over 3,000.

I’m expecting, with some of the investments in marketplace, that we’ll see more and more listings there. Some of the programs we’re running internally around our marketplace capacity drawdown program, which allows customers who have committed spend with us to leverage that for our marketplace partners. We’re seeing more and more partners want to be on the marketplace.

What are some newer investments in the ecosystem you want partners to know about?

We talk about the connected ecosystem. The power of three or the power of N.

This idea that our data cloud product partners with our services partners with our cloud partners, plus us—it's a force multiplier.

The work we do together, it decreases time-to-value for clients. We accelerate that much faster.

We have a resource—that’s their entire job now, to just focus on these connections between the partners because we’re seeing more and more need from our clients to be connected and to drive time-to-value.

Last year, we were talking a lot about what [AI] technology could or couldn’t do. This year, the conversation is a lot more about what business problems are we solving for clients and what are the outcomes, and then what’s the technology needed to do that?

It’s a shift to talking more about getting business value, business outcomes and then pulling through the technology. Whereas last year, we were more enamored with what the technology could do. It was newer. It was coming to market.

Do you want to see the Snowflake ecosystem continue to grow?

We are the No. 1 ecosystem for AI apps and expertise. That means growth. I don’t think we can avoid that.

However, I do want to acknowledge that our partnership with our top partners is really important. And we see them leaning in, in a major way.

We've got several partners who are headed on this path to $1 billion [Snowflake practices].

We’ve invested a lot in this idea of enabling every workload and the expertise needed to get there. It's not just technical training, but it’s how do we go to market together? How do we sell together?

We launched a platform earlier this year called SPN [Snowflake Partner Network] Learn. We now have over 30 accreditations there that are really helping our partners with not just the technical aspects of what our technology can do, but implementation best practices.

We’re also focused on deepening certifications, advanced certification. Growth comes in different ways. Do we need a lot more partners? The ones we have are incredible. Our platform has grown so much this idea of deepening expertise is going to become really important and making sure that we’re showing up in our co-sell motion or joint-selling motion together. Speaking the same language so that we’re able to resonate with our customers.

Our partners also will grow. They’re building a lot of advanced applications on top of our platform. We’re now over 11,500 customers. Many of them are customers that also leverage our product partners. We’ll continue to see partners investing in and building those applications as well.

Growth of the Snowflake ecosystem—is that due to direct efforts by you all to grow it, or maybe that’s a testament to your products growing in popularity and usage?

It’s both.

We know that the ecosystem does grow organically.

The sheer number of partners is interesting, but what I think is even more important is the number of tiered partners. Partners that go beyond registered.

We’re looking really at the partners that tier with us, which means we’re selling together. We’ve got joint work. They’re investing in certifications and talent and then moving up those tiers.

That’s really where my team is more focused. Homing in on the partners that are really making the investments. And we’re having a material impact in the market together.

How do you see Snowflake partners changing in the AI era?

The majority of our partners have been investing in what we call assets or accelerators. This idea of productizing so that they can monetize their IP is an area where we see most of our services partners headed or considering that.

There’s been a convergence as they look at how the business is shifting. Their mix of bodies versus agents and so on that’s going to be necessary as we move forward.

We'll start to see more of these connected ecosystems.

But then each of the firms [that are] looking at creating more assets that are hardened and can stand alone. We’re talking a lot more about that.