Snowflake Inc. today launched its seventh industry cloud, this one devoted to government and education.

The cloud combines its data platform with software from its partners and industry-specific datasets. Snowflake said the cloud meets a wide variety of security and compliance standards around the globe and addresses the need for secure collaboration within and across government agencies.

“The largest category in the world is the public sector,” said Jeff Frazier, head of the global public sector at Snowflake. “It lags behind commercial markets because it has a lot more rules. To get into this category you have to do a lot of preparation.”

Reduced risk in sharing

The company said sharing information on a single platform reduces the security risks of physically moving data and enables often siloed organizations like government agencies and academic institutions to unify information. These can frustrate collaboration efforts when the White House is encouraging more data sharing between the public and private sectors.

That’s different from the dynamics of commercial markets, Frazier said. “Commercial markets typically have a lot of competitiveness among categories. In government the mission is common,” he said. Snowflake’s cross-cloud foundation is expected to be especially appealing in this market. “Cross-cloud is important because you have an ecosystem with many different cloud offerings,” he said. “Having the ability to sit on top of all of them is critical.”

So is the platform’s support for multiple data types. “Ninety percent of decisions come from unstructured data,” Frazier said. “We are able to put both structured and unstructured data in a common layer.”

Highly compliant

Snowflake said the platform has achieved FedRAMP Moderate and StateRAMP High compliance, as well as support for regulated workloads subject to International Traffic in Arms Regulations, Criminal Justice Information Services, Internal Revenue Service 1075 rules for safeguarding financial information and Federal Acquisition Regulation and Defense FAR Supplement security standards.

Its platform also supports Family Education and Privacy Act workloads across U.S. regions as well as several international standards. “This is a global cloud,” Frazier said.

He pointed to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which provides coverage to more than 100 million Americans, as an example of a federal agency that has benefited from increased information sharing. The center unified its security data on the Snowflake platform and improved its threat responsiveness while also saving “hundreds of millions of dollars in improper payments,” Frazier said.

The Government and Education Data Cloud also comes with marketplace offerings from partners like spatial data firm Carto Inc. and government-specific professional services providers Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., Deloitte LLP and Plante & Moran PLLC.

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