In its early days, Snowflake was misunderstood as just a better data warehouse. It turns out that the company’s vision of a data cloud has completely altered the way the industry thinks about data platforms.

Snowflake’s stated target of $10 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2028 still leaves plenty of room for growth. The looming question is how the company will navigate a turbulent market to get there. The likely path will  be a new set of data-centric apps that Snowflake believes will usher in a sustainable era of innovation in AI, productivity and cloud scale.

This subject will be a key focus during this year’s Snowflake Summit in Las Vegas. Beyond that, the conference will be a chance to dive into the latest in the world of data collaboration and Snowflake’s stated long-term mission to simplify the way organizations use data.

“Snowflake is tapping into a multi-hundred-billion-dollar total available market and continues to grow at a rapid pace,” wrote theCUBE industry analyst Dave Vellante in an edition of his Breaking Analysis series from late last year. “In our view, the company is embarking on its third major wave of innovation, data apps, while its first and second waves are still bearing significant fruit.”

During this year’s Snowflake Summit, Vellante and theCUBE industry analysts John Furrier and Lisa Martin, and co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, will discuss how the third major wave of innovation is shaping out and all the latest product announcements and trends in the world of data collaboration. (* Disclosure below.)

Integrating generative artificial intelligence

In mid-May, reports were filed that indicated Snowflake was in advanced talks to acquire a search startup called Neeva Inc., which was founded by former Google LLC advertising executive Sridhar Ramaswamy. Those intentions were announced by the company later that month.

Such an acquisition would utilize Neeva’s technology to help Snowflake create AI-powered search capabilities. That would play into Snowflake’s ambitions to become the “App Store for data apps,” according to Vellante, utilizing Neeva’s large language model capabilities, along with its vector database, to enable supporting data application development in a simplified way.

“Our fundamental research premise is that applications are moving from being process-centric to data-centric where logic is embedded in the data, not the other way around,” Vellante said. “A capability such as this enables Snowflake and its partners to very quickly and simply build apps inside of the Snowflake Data Cloud and essentially become the data App Store.”

If Snowflake can enable data app developers to build apps more efficiently and quickly, then it can tap the scale and innovation in hyperscale clouds to be the best platform on which to build data apps, according to Vellante.

Earlier in the year, Snowflake said it had agreed to a deal with Gap Mobilize Corp., which does business as Mobilize.Net, to acquire its database migration tool SnowConvert.

“With the acquisition of SnowConvert, we can help more customers, partners and, more broadly, our Snowflake partner network move more data and applications into the data cloud, enabling customers to obtain faster value from their investment in Snowflake sooner,” said Ted Brackin, Snowflake’s vice president of professional services.

Company optimistic despite a stock slide

On May 24, shares of Snowflake sank after the company slashed its full-year outlook. The company reported a net loss of $225.6 million for the quarter, rising from a loss of $165.8 million one year earlier, though it also reported product revenue rose 50% from a year ago to $590.1 million for the quarter.

The company said it’s expecting product revenue of $2.6 billion for fiscal 2024, which is below the consensus estimate of $2.7 billion. Officials said they anticipate product revenue of between $620 million and $625 million for the second quarter, which represents lower growth of just 33% to 34%. That’s something that posed a concern for Third Bridge analyst Jordan Berger, who said it was a clear indication of exposure to the same economic headwinds that are impacting the greater cloud computing industry.

“It raises significant questions about the company’s ability to execute whilst continuing to invest considerably in sales and marketing as well as research and development,” he said.

The company, meanwhile, has been pointing toward long-term growth.

“Very large secular trends, very big markets are forming here, and we can’t lose sight of that by looking at a single period, so I’m super-optimistic about the path that we’re on,” Snowflake Chief Executive Officer Frank Slootman told CNBC.

The path ahead clearly is anything but simple, especially given larger trends in the industry. In addition to the analysis around larger data trends, Snowflake Summit will be an opportunity to assess whether the company is positioned to manage the turbulence and beat its own forecasts to reach $10 billion in annual revenue by 2028.

Is that goal attainable? Some would argue that such a goal could be viewed as being too conservative. Of course, things can change quite dramatically, with the possibility that competition picks them off or a company such as Databricks Inc. is able to, in the longer term, replicate the functionality of Snowflake with open-source technologies, wrote Vellante in an edition of his Breaking Analysis series.

“But in our view – there’s plenty of room for growth. The markets for data are enormous. The challenges with data silos have been well-documented. The real key is: Can and will Snowflake deliver on the promises of simplifying data?” he said.

TheCUBE event livestream

Don’t miss theCUBE’s coverage of Snowflake Summit from June 27-29. Plus, you can watch theCUBE’s event coverage on-demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch theCUBE’s coverage of Snowflake Summit, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

SiliconANGLE also has analyst deep dives in our Breaking Analysis podcast, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify.

Guests

Stay tuned for theCUBE’s complete guest list during the Snowflake Summit event here.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Snowflake Summit. Snowflake Inc. and other sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Check out the latest Breaking Analysis from Dave Vellante as to what we can expect from this year’s Snowflake Summit:

Photo: SiliconANGLE