Cloud-based data warehousing firm Snowflake is expanding its industry-specific offerings by launching a platform for manufacturers. The Manufacturing Data Cloud seeks to support automotive, technology, energy, and industrial companies to address information silos and increase collaboration with partners, suppliers, and customers.
The single, fully managed, and secure platform can consolidate multi-cloud data with unified governance, enabling businesses to improve visibility across their supply chains by combining their data with third-party information and Snowflake Marketplace data.
Snowpark, a development tool that allows building machine learning models in Python, Java, and Scala, is also integrated for demand forecasting and supply chain management.
A sixth offering for Snowflake
Snowflake’s native support for semi-structured, structured, and unstructured data is also leveraged to capture shop floor data and streamline manufacturing operations. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed weaknesses in supply chains but also created an opportunity to drive visibility into the supply chain and factory floor, said Snowflake.
The Manufacturing Data Cloud is the company’s sixth industry-specific offering and follows rival Databricks’ introduction of a version of its lakehouse data repository oriented toward manufacturers.
Snowflake and Databricks have been racing to orient their offerings to specific vertical industries to recruit partners and target pockets of growth in an uncertain economy.
Boosted by supply chain resiliency and smart manufacturing investment
Snowflake’s global head of manufacturing, Tim Long, said the Manufacturing Data Cloud is built on Snowflake’s already announced capabilities. Still, the rollout is an opportunity to highlight what some existing manufacturing customers are doing with the platform and recruit new customers.
Snowflake is activating its partner network solutions and bringing them to launch through post-launch activations with webinars and custom presentations for manufacturing customers.
The company’s partners, such as Riveron Consulting, Ernst & Young Global, and Vertex Systems Oy, will also release new products and upgrades. Manufacturing has emerged as a prime vertical market for Snowflake, thanks to post-pandemic investments in supply chain resiliency and efforts to jumpstart the U.S. manufacturing sector, Long said.
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