What is Snowflake and what is it used for?
Snowflake is a cloud data platform that stores, processes and shares data for analytics and enterprise applications, charging for what the company consumes.
The most common use is consolidating data from many sources in a single cloud query environment and running SQL analytics on it. The platform separates storage from compute: the company pays for storage per terabyte and for compute per credit, and picks resource sizes to match the workload.
Other uses include sharing datasets with authorized teams and organizations, ingesting data continuously and administering access through controls and policies. The platform also offers AI services, such as Cortex, which have their own billing.
The company chooses among the Standard, Enterprise, Business Critical and Virtual Private Snowflake editions, and some features depend on the edition: multi-cluster compute and extended governance controls arrive with Enterprise, and Business Critical serves regulated industries.
Before deploying, define the process served, the data involved and the owners, and review security and contract terms.





