UPDATED 14:15 EDT / NOVEMBER 20 2020

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Snowflake and Microsoft: How competitors double value for shared customers

In the shifting arena of enterprise tech, alliance-forming is often the twist that drives the plot.

No one company, however strong its portfolio of solutions and services, can go it alone.

“From day one, we looked at a diverse ecosystem as one of the most important strategies for us both to bring innovation to customers and also to drive growth,” said Casey McGee (pictured, right), vice president of global ISV sales at Microsoft.

During Snowflake’s 2020 Data Cloud Summit, McGee and Colleen Kapase (pictured, left), vice president of worldwide partnerships and alliances at Snowflake Inc., spoke with Dave Vellante, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. They discussed how their organizations are collaborating to create business value for shared customers.  (* Disclosure below.)

Creating win-win scenarios — even in cases where offerings overlap

Microsoft has a long history of allying with other major software vendors, of course, but finding a balance between cooperation and competition has sometimes been a challenge.

McGee acknowledged that, but pointed out Microsoft has also gotten good at developing complementary angles of development — and that scenario is the one that applies in the case of Snowflake.

“We’re a platform company,” McGee said. “The key for us is really deeply understanding what’s important to the customer and then bringing the best of the Microsoft and Snowflake scenarios to bear.  We are intently focused on the democratization of data. So we know that Snowflake is the premier partner to help us do that. Getting that right is key to users coming together and getting the performance they expect.”

The Snowflake-Microsoft partnership has resulted in a seamless, frictionless, and ease of product use that matters to the companies’ joint customers, according to Kapase. And cross-company collaboration by sales professionals has been beneficial as well.

“Having our sales teams work as a partnership, even though we compete, we know where we play together,” Kapase explained. “And I see us doing that over and over again, more and more around the world too, which is really important as Snowflake pushes forward beyond the North America geographies into … Europe and Asia.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Snowflake’s Data Cloud Summit. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Data Cloud Summit 2020. Neither Snowflake Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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