Snowflake supports Apache Iceberg, enhancing data sharing

Snowflake has announced full support for Apache Iceberg tables, bringing its core analytical and security capabilities to a popular open table format.

With this development, enterprises can now access Snowflake's secure data-sharing capabilities with Iceberg tables, allowing for seamless data access, sharing, and monetisation. This development also enables companies to build, scale, and share AI-driven applications more efficiently.

Christian Kleinerman, Executive Vice President of Product at Snowflake, stated, "The future of data is open, but it also needs to be easy. Customers shouldn't have to choose between open formats and best-in-class performance or business continuity. With Snowflake's latest Iceberg tables innovations, customers can work with their open data exactly as they would with data stored in the Snowflake platform, all while removing complexity and preserving Snowflake's enterprise-grade performance and security."

Organisations such as Illumina, Komodo Health, Medidata, and WHOOP can now run AI and analytic operations on Iceberg tables without the need to move data, which reduces complexity and costs while speeding up the time to insights.

Snowflake's enhancements mean that nearly all of its core analytics features are now available on Iceberg tables. This includes capabilities like the Search Optimisation Service and Query Acceleration Service, promising enhanced query performance shortly.

Stephen Horn from Illumina commented, "By running analytics on Apache Iceberg tables with Snowflake, we've unlocked flexibility and performance in managing our manufacturing system data at scale. This open architecture allows us to seamlessly analyze vast datasets while maintaining cost efficiency, delivering faster insights to improve manufacturing processes and faster access to critical data for self-service. Snowflake's support for Iceberg has not only improved our data agility but also reinforced the industry-wide push toward open standards, ensuring that innovation in genomics remains accessible, scalable, and impactful for the entire scientific community."

With Snowflake's offerings, businesses are expected to overcome traditional trade-offs between interoperability and performance. This is especially pertinent for organisations aiming to implement open lakehouse architectures.

Laurent Bride, Chief Technology Officer at Komodo Health, expressed the impact, "At Komodo Health, our mission is to reduce the global burden of disease through our comprehensive Healthcare Map, platform, tooling, and analytics solutions. Apache Iceberg and open source catalogs like Polaris Catalog have been transformative in helping us create actionable and governed insights from complex healthcare data. Open table formats provide the flexibility, interoperability, and enhanced data governance we need, while Snowflake's unparalleled performance capabilities ensure we can scale these insights effectively with maximum efficiency. Together, this powerful technology foundation empowers us to make healthcare data more accessible and actionable, ultimately improving patient outcomes across the healthcare ecosystem."

Snowflake is expanding its role in driving open source initiatives, having invested in projects like Apache NiFi and Modin, which enhance data interoperability. These projects contribute towards open data ecosystems, strengthening the company's investment in openness.

Tom Doyle, Chief Technology Officer at Medidata, highlighted the significance: "Innovations like Apache Iceberg are critical for Medidata and drive usability for our products like Clinical Data Studio to help our customers achieve faster, more flexible, and simpler data operations. A unified data layer is the foundation for our AI powered platform. Open, interoperable data standards, particularly through Snowflake's robust open catalog, Iceberg tables, and data collaboration technologies, will further advance our data strategy and propel our industry."

Matt Luizzi, Senior Director of Business Analytics at WHOOP, noted, "Data interoperability and flexibility are essential to delivering accurate, real-time insights to our customers. The vendor-neutral design of Apache Iceberg and Apache Polaris Catalog ensures we can seamlessly activate diverse data sources without having to copy it or get locked into a single ecosystem."