The adoption of cloud computing technology has made data a business-critical asset. It’s also broken down the traditional silos within companies, both technologically and culturally. But, ironically, the shift to software as a service has inadvertently built new silos, locking data within applications, data centers and cloud regions.

“It’s incredibly hard for data science teams to unlock the true value of data when they can’t address patterns that exist across data sets,” said Frank Slootman (pictured, left), chairman and chief executive officer of Snowflake Inc. “So we’ll perpetuate a status we’ve had since the beginning of computing if we don’t start to crack that problem now.”

Slootman and Anita Lynch (pictured, right), vice president of data governance, instrumentation and data architecture of Disney Streaming Services at The Walt Disney Co., spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during Snowflake’s Data Cloud Summit. They discussed the importance of the data cloud, data clean rooms, data governance and opportunities in the cloud. (* Disclosure below.)

Stop data siloing now

The opportunity Slootman refers to is the data cloud, which provides a location where data can be accessed without parameters and boundaries.

“Customers have always looked at things one workload at a time; that mentality has to go,” he said. “You have to have a data cloud mentality, as well as a workload orientation towards managing data.”

Snowflake’s platform enables the data cloud, and the company is on a mission to save the computing world from perpetuating the silo cycle. But the adoption of the data cloud is a step process, according to Slootman, as SaaS and public cloud vendors tend to protect their data within their boundaries.

“There is natural friction for this to happen, but on the other hand there is an enormous need, [because] we can’t deliver on the power and potential of data unless we allow it to come together,” he said.

Disney is one company that has taken the data cloud journey. Snowflake has reduced the time required to pull insights from the volumes of data produced by the Disney+ streaming service and lowered the cost, according to Lynch.

“It’s phenomenal to see the speed at which we can operate and really, truly understand our customer’s interests and their preferences and then tailor the experiences that they want and deserve for them,” she said.

Data clean rooms automate data governance processes

Data clean rooms are one Snowflake function that makes Lynch’s data governance job easier and Disney’s stakeholders happier.

“Our stakeholders not only know what data is available and accessible to them, they can also understand easily and quickly whether or not the data that they’re using is for the appropriate use case,” Lynch said. “That’s a big part of how we scale data governance, and a lot of the work that we would normally have to do manually is done for us through the data clean rooms.”

The idea of a data cloud is now a reality, according to Slootman.

“People are recognizing why this matters,” Slootman said. “It is a step-level function, a very big change in mentality and orientation.”

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