Here Is Snowflake’s Plan To Drive AI Sales For Partners: Channel Chief

Global channel chief Tyler Prince outlines CRN Snowflake’s plans for the second half of 2024 to help partners drive cloud computing, data and generative AI sales.

Snowflake is urging its army of system integrators, MSPs, consultants and resale partners to boost their expertise around the Snowflake platform and focus on industry-specific use cases to drive AI and data transformation sales.

Snowflake’s global channel chief Tyler Prince tells CRN that artificial intelligence is the perfect use case for cloud computing as customers need all their data in a secure and centralized location to reap the true benefits of AI and generative AI.

“Pretty much over the last six or nine months, every company in every industry, in every part of the world has turned to a consultancy partner asking, ‘What should my Gen AI strategy be?’” said Prince, worldwide leader of alliances and channels at Snowflake. “Without exception, there were questions about what does that look like? The ecosystem of partners, these consultancies and SIs responded by doing the work.”

The $2.67 billion Bozeman, Mont.-based data cloud company plans to be a dominant player in the AI and GenAI markets thanks to its world-class Snowflake Data Cloud platform that offers the security, performance and scalability needed to load, integrate, analyze and share data, Prince said.

In an interview with CRN on the eve of the Snowflake Data Cloud Cloud Summit 2024 (June 3-6) in San Francisco, Prince explains Snowflake’s Partner Network strategy for the second half of 2024, what partners should be doing, and why AI is the perfect use case for cloud computing.

Tyler, what’s Snowflake’s channel strategy in the second half of 2024? What should partners be doing right now?

It’s to build their capabilities and expertise around our intention to be the platform of choice for data and AI. Because if you look at the amount of innovation that we’re driving all of the time, it’s building their expertise so they continue to understand how to leverage the power of the platform. This isn’t a tool—this is a platform, which allows customers to innovate.

So number one, just embracing Snowflake as the platform that can drive value around data and AI.

Then, number two, building their expertise. Because as we innovate on the platform, there’s more to learn and more skills to develop, and we’re here to support them.

Then, number three is partners taking that platform with an industry point of view, or persona point of view, into companies to help them understand how they unlock more value with them through their data on the Snowflake platform.

What’s one channel special sauce that Snowflake has?

There’s a tremendous value of how our partners come together in an ecosystem. I often refer to it as a connected ecosystem.

So when someone like Accenture embraces some of these LLMs [large language models] and brings that together with some of our app providers to provide an industry solution to a customer— that’s where the real power becomes.

Ultimately, the real excitement is in the way we show up for our customers with a very connected ecosystem of SI’s working with our app and data and tech partners and working closely with us around our AI strategy. That’s very powerful and adds a tremendous amount of value to our customers.

What incentives, funding and resources are you giving channel partners to take advantage of this AI opportunity?

Some are in the form of MDF funds where we’re looking at how do we co-market together out in the marketplace.

Some are in incentives around helping customers get started on their Snowflake journey—so investing in proof of concepts or workshops and things like that to help offset some of the costs.

Then also investing in helping our partners build their capabilities. How do we help them train and earn certifications and really build out their knowledge and expertise around Snowflake. We have programs around all of those.

AI seems like a perfect use case for cloud. It’s a reason to get everyone’s data in a centralized location so AI can make sense of all the data. Is that a big use case for Snowflake partners?

Yes, I agree. We all understand that, not only do you have to have the data in a location—but also in a way that it’s accessible, that it’s governed, that it’s secure.

It’s not only getting data into a place that it can be easy to access, but applying those other premises to make sure that that data is used for the right reasons with the right people. There’s clearly an opportunity there.

Pretty much over the last six or nine months, every company in every industry, in every part of the world has turned to a consultancy partner asking, ‘What should my Gen AI strategy be?’ Without exception, there were questions about what does that look like? The ecosystem of partners—these consultancies and SIs—responded by doing the work.

They provided their findings on, ‘Yes, you can improve customer service. Yes, you can drive more compliance. Yes, you can make your supply chain more efficient through Gen AI.’

However, the next question is, ‘Well, how am I ready to do that? How do I do that?’ The answer is, ‘Well, you need to have your data centralized and able to share in a very secure, compliant and governed way.’

Gen AI is turning into an incredible opportunity for Snowflake and our partners to help companies that are asking insightful questions about, ‘How does Gen AI transform my business?’ and then, ‘How do I do that?’ We feel very confident that we’re a great platform to be considered for that transformation and the journey to AI.

Data has been compared to the fuel that will power the IT industry over the next decade. Why will Snowflake come out on top?

That’s one of the reasons why I’m here because I saw the excitement and the evolution towards the importance of data.

It gets back to this idea of that, clearly, there’s tremendous business benefit around generative AI and all the elements of AI. But it quickly comes back to [the fact that] it’s only as good as the data that you have.

The data that you have should be [in] a place that is accessible, governed, secured, and is able to be effectively shared. That’s how we’ve built the company. And that’s why so many enterprises look to us as their standard around data.

This next evolution is about, ‘Okay, how do we continue to help customers get that value out of the data?’ Whether it’s more effectively sharing it with their business partners, whether it’s creating applications that allows them to monetize that data, whether it’s allowing them to increase customer satisfaction, or reduce costs, or increase compliance in these different functions within their enterprise.

I couldn’t be more excited in the position that we have in terms of being known as a world class, successful modern data platform, and how we’re going to power this evolution of AI.