Snowflake Inc. today is launching its fourth industry-specific data cloud with an offering tailored for retailers and manufacturers of consumer packaged goods.

The Retail Data Cloud combines Snowflake’s data platform with third-party software and datasets from partners. The announcement comes less than two weeks after the company rolled out its Healthcare & Life Sciences Data Cloud to add to existing offerings in financial services and media and entertainment. Snowflake said its cloud will enable customers to access new data and collaborate with suppliers and partners.

Going vertical has been a hot strategy for cloud and big data players alike. All the major cloud platform providers now have industry-specific offerings and Snowflake competitor Databricks Inc. has recently announced versions of its lakehouse analytics platform for both financial services and retail markets.

Snowflake isn’t claiming to bring any vertical industry expertise to the game. Rather, the offering is packaged as “a combination of Snowflake’s clean room with partners’ joint solutions, said Rosemary Hua, retail and CPG industry go-to-market lead at Snowflake. The company added an in-product feature for retailers that want to make money from their data.

“They can do so in the Snowflake platform by setting pricing per query and at a standard contract level,” Hua said. “If you’re trying to make money from your data, you used to have to build contracts off-platform. Now you can do it natively.”

The vendors leverage four kinds of partnerships, Hua said. Service consultants such as Slalom LLC have pre-packaged service offerings for pricing, auditing and the like. Data partners enrich customers’ primary data with third-party data such as weather forecasts and point-of-sale information.

Technology partners that include DataRobot Inc. and Tableau Software Inc. provide dashboards and pre-packaged analytics. “Powered by Snowflake” partners such as Blue Yonder Group Inc. allow industry players to share data and collaborate on improving customer experiences or optimizing supply chains.

Retailers can use the service to integrate data from multiple sources, ensure regulatory compliance with a suite of security and auditing capabilities, scale up to meet seasonal peak needs and share data in near-real-time on all major public cloud platforms.

Several large retailers are already using the cloud service, including Kroger Co. data subsidiary 84.51°, Instacart Inc., PepsiCo Inc., Rakuten Marketing LLC, Under Armour Inc. and Asics Digital Inc.

Among the partners that will provide data and software in the cloud are Cart.com Inc., Nulogy Corp., Żabka Polska Sp. z o.o., AccuWeather Inc., Atlas Technologies Group Inc., Catalina Marketing Corp., Crisp Inc., Experian PLC, Heap Inc., NC Solutions Inc. and Market Track LLC. Technology partners include Amazon.com Inc., Dataiku Inc. and Robling Inc.

Photo: Unsplash