Opus Unveils Key Insights from Snowflake Summit 2023: Here’s What We Learned and Experienced

To the Summit and Back

From the moment we reached the venue, the energy was electrifying. The event brought together a global community of technical experts, business leaders, executives, and users. It exceeded our expectations, with almost 12,000 attendees from every corner of the globe joining forces.

Accompanied by Sivaraman Singaram, our VP of Customer Success & Digital Transformation, and Debashis Bhattacharyya, our Sr. Manager of Enterprise Architect, the Opus team embarked on an unforgettable experience.

From June 26 to 29, the fifth annual event hosted by the Montana-based data cloud company promised four action-packed days of discussions on data, apps, and AI. This included sessions on cutting-edge innovations, including revolutionary strides taken in Generative AI and LLMs, which are shaping the future. The event also highlighted the power of seamless alignment and data collaboration within organizations – something we are truly passionate about.

With an atmosphere teeming with energy, over 400 insightful sessions, and a lineup of brilliant speakers, the summit left us inspired and empowered. The icing on the cake was the spectacular venue in Las Vegas.

It Was Certainly Eventful!

As companies strive to remain competitive, the ability to adapt quickly becomes paramount. For this, it’s essential to remain abreast of technological advancements as well as rapidly changing customer behaviors. This is where the Snowflake Summit proved invaluable, connecting us with tech giants and technology users from various industries. It broadened our perspective on the future of technology and provided insights into user challenges.

Deep Dive into Generative AI

One of the most captivating sessions at the event was delivered by Snowflake Chairman and CEO Frank Slootman and NVIDIA’s Founder and CEO, Jensen Huang. Their thought-provoking discussion revolved around AI, LLMs (large language models), and GPU-accelerated computing, which have an impact on almost every industry. Snowflake’s partnership with NVIDIA offers businesses an accelerated path to leveraging the power of Generative AI applications using proprietary data within the Snowflake Data Cloud.

Generative AI has been an area of keen interest for Opus. While data has long been used to drive informed decision-making, Generative AI takes it a step further by creating vast knowledge bases. For instance, Morgan Stanley has harnessed the potential of Generative AI to power a chatbot that can search wealth management content, instantly accessing the collective knowledge of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. This transformative technology can personalize and enhance financial services, creating a seismic shift in the FinTech landscape.

Key members of Snowflake’s engineering and product teams presented insightful demos. Big thanks to Mona Attariyan, Dash Desai, Saras Nowak, Elsa Mayer, and Amanda Kelly for demonstrating how the Snowflake Data Cloud is enabling global organizations to achieve their data goals.

New Innovations by Snowflake

On the event’s second day, we had an incredible experience, diving deep into the world of data engineering and AI/ML using Snowflake. The event started with an engaging keynote where we explored the intricacies of Snowflake’s architecture and witnessed live demos that showcased the power of its native apps.

Here’s a closer look at some of the remarkable highlights:

• Snowpark Containers Services: Developers can now securely deploy, manage, and scale Generative AI, full-stack apps, LLMs, and more within Snowflake.
• Document AI: Leveraging Generative AI, this revolutionary LLM is designed to extract insights from unstructured data without requiring NLP or ML expertise. As IDC predicts a surge in unstructured data creation, this tool will prove indispensable in the coming years.
• Iceberg Tables: Organizations can now work with data in their existing storage using the Apache Iceberg format, benefitting from Snowflake’s seamless usability, exceptional performance, and unified governance.
• Snowflake Performance Index (SPI): Snowflake now offers increased transparency by showcasing significant improvements in query duration for stable customer workloads, with a remarkable 15% enhancement in the last eight months.
• Snowflake Native App Framework: Developers can leverage this framework, available for public preview on AWS, to build and test their own apps within their Snowflake account, eliminating the need for data export or external access.

While these features are currently in various preview phases, we eagerly anticipate their full release to offer our clients extraordinary benefits.

One discussion throughout the summit that truly stood out was with Christopher Walsh, the esteemed Executive Director at DTCC. Christopher graced the summit as a keynote speaker and showed immense interest in partnering with Opus to revolutionize the financial landscape.

The summit was a hub of insightful conversations, both during the sessions and after hours. We got the opportunity to visit designated booths of several technology companies, like Capital One Sling, Minio, Keebo, Sky Flow, and interacted with them after-hours. We had engaging dialogues around the solutions they have built on top of Snowflake to solve real-life data-related problems. These conversations brought forth a plethora of ideas and perspectives, cementing our commitment to exploring potential synergies and supporting each other on our respective journeys.

The Snowflake Summit serves as a testament to the power of collaboration. We are excited to embrace the future of finance alongside our esteemed partners. We also eagerly await Snowflake Summit 2024, set to take place in the vibrant city of San Francisco – a hub of FinTech companies of all sizes.