Published on

November 24, 2023

Machine Learning
eBook

Machine Learning in a Snowflake Data Warehouse? Yes!

Learn how to use AI in a Snowflake data warehouse with Akkio, and learn the benefits of ML in Snowflake, including scalability, speed, and cost-efficiency.
Craig Wisneski
Co-Founder & Head of G&A, Akkio
Machine Learning

Data warehouses were first conceptualized in the 1980s by researchers at IBM, but their use has grown exponentially with the rise of big data.

Data warehouses provide a single source for an organization’s data that can be accessed, organized, and queried in order to gain insights from the data. However, traditional data warehouses have been limited in their ability to scale their capacity and use powerful analytics tools. Snowflake, a cloud-based data warehouse, has revolutionized the industry with its scalability and ability to fuel machine learning (ML) algorithms. It's now an integral part of ML pipelines for many Fortune 500 companies.

ML is used across many industries to quickly analyze large amounts of data and uncover previously hidden patterns and correlations. In this article, we'll explore how to use ML in a Snowflake data warehouse, and what steps you need to take to implement it. We’ll also look at some of the benefits of using ML in your business.

What is Snowflake?

To understand how Snowflake works, it helps to know what a traditional data warehouse is. A traditional data warehouse stores data in a relational database and is used for analysis and reporting. 

For example, a retail store may have a data warehouse that contains a table of sales transaction data with columns for the date, time, item purchased, customer ID, and location. Or a manufacturing company may have a data warehouse that contains a table of production process data with columns for the parts used, machines used and time elapsed.

The benefits of using a data warehouse are numerous. It allows organizations to store, manage and query data in a centralized location. This makes it easier for teams to share data, analyze trends and create valuable insights that can help the business make better decisions.

However, traditional data warehouses have been limited in their ability to scale beyond a certain point. Snowflake, on the other hand, is an all-in-one data platform that leverages the power of the cloud to provide an easy-to-use, secure, and highly scalable data warehouse for data science, machine learning models, and artificial intelligence.

Snowflake also offers a number of features and tools to help streamline and simplify the process of developing and deploying data-driven applications. These features include Snowpark, a set of interfaces for developers to use their favorite programming language in Snowflake, and Snowflake Connectors, a library of tools for connecting to popular BI tools, open-source languages, data lakes, and data warehousing ecosystems.

Snowflake also offers a comprehensive set of APIs for building end-to-end machine-learning workflows. This includes APIs for Python, Java, Scala, and SQL. Additionally, Snowflake provides UDFs (User-defined Functions) for workloads that are not available through built-in functions, such as deep learning and feature engineering. With these tools, developers can easily build and deploy machine learning pipelines that leverage the power of the cloud.

Finally, Snowflake’s data cloud provides elasticity and scalability that enables users to quickly and easily increase their computing capacity as needed. This allows organizations to efficiently process large amounts of unstructured data, which can be used to train machine learning models and other artificial intelligence solutions.

Why should you consider using Snowflake to apply machine learning in your business?

Snowflake itself isn't a machine learning platform, but its cloud-based architecture and scalability make it an ideal environment for leveraging ML algorithms.

This is because ML is very data-intensive and requires quick access to large datasets in order to provide effective results. Snowflake's cloud-based warehousing solutions can support the necessary infrastructure for ML projects with its easy scalability, ability to query data quickly, and cost-efficiency. Additionally, Snowflake's data processing capabilities such as Spark and other tools make it possible to optimize model training and lifecycle management.

Snowflake also ensures data security and provides real-time access to data that helps organizations analyze and predict outcomes more accurately. This allows companies to leverage ML algorithms to make more informed decisions without sacrificing speed or quality.

The main challenge that companies face when leveraging ML in a snowflake warehouse is data preparation. Cleaning up large datasets for ML projects can be time-consuming and costly. Snowflake's ability to quickly query data makes it easier to do so, however, allowing for more accurate ML models to be built. 

Organizations can also use Snowflake's Data Sharing feature for collaboration between data scientists and business analysts in ML projects. With this feature, multiple organizations can securely access the same datasets, reducing the need for redundant work in preparing data for ML algorithms.

It is essential that organizations ensure their security and compliance policies are up to date when leveraging ML in a Snowflake warehouse. This includes having secure authentication protocols, controlling data movement, and making sure any potential threats are identified before they become issues.

Overall, leveraging machine learning in a Snowflake warehouse has many benefits due to its scalability, quick query ability, integrated analytics platform, and cost-efficiency. However, businesses should consider data preparation time and security considerations when using ML with Snowflake technology. Having the right resources in place is key to getting the most out of machine learning with Snowflake warehousing.

Why should you use ML in your business?

Just because ML is an available tool, doesn't mean your business needs to integrate it.

That said, ML & ML pipelines have become an invaluable tool for many businesses. They can help automate certain processes and allow companies to analyze huge amounts of data with relative ease. Machine learning can also improve efficiency, reduce costs and provide insights that were not previously possible.

For example, churn is often called the “silent killer” of many businesses. In a constantly changing economy, it can be difficult to keep customers engaged and motivated to stay with your company. However, ML models can help you predict customer churn by recognizing patterns in behavior that could indicate someone is likely to leave your business. This allows companies to take proactive measures before the customer decides to move on.

Fraud prevention is another area where ML can play a role. By incorporating an ML model into the security system for credit card transactions, businesses can quickly detect fraud attempts and block them from occurring. This saves time and money that would otherwise be wasted chasing down false leads or dealing with fraudulent activity.

On the HR side, employee attrition is also something that practically every business struggles with. With ML, you can analyze employee performance data over time to identify patterns in behavior that could lead employees to leave your company before they do so - allowing you to intervene early if necessary. 

Further, lead scoring helps prioritize leads based on their likelihood of becoming paying customers - useful in any business' sales process - while accelerating deal closure time by enabling the sales team to focus their efforts on those most likely to buy immediately or soon after outreach begins. 

Moving beyond digital businesses, predictive maintenance for hardware has proven to be one of the most profound uses of ML in recent years. By combining machine learning with IoT sensors, businesses can identify potential problems before they become an issue and take the necessary steps to prevent them from occurring. This reduces downtime and keeps operations running smoothly.

Improve your ML Pipeline: apply machine learning and AI to a business using Snowflake

The traditional approach to implementing ML meant hiring data scientists and months of tedious coding and testing. But this process is time-consuming, expensive, and can yield unpredictable results. In fact, 87% of organizations that begin ML projects do not see a successful outcome.

Applying ML using Snowflake also meant that businesses would need experts in data warehouses and ML algorithms to get the project off the ground. But with Akkio’s ML platform, the process of applying ML with Snowflake is effortless. Akkio integrates seamlessly with Snowflake, allowing businesses to select datasets, train models, and push predictions right back into Snowflake with minimal effort.

You can simply click to connect your Snowflake account as a data source or in the output step, and select which dataset you’d like to use. In a comparison between leading AutoML platforms like Google AutoML, Microsoft Azure AI, Amazon SageMaker, and Akkio, Akkio came out on top as the fastest, most cost-effective, and easiest-to-use ML solution for businesses.

Akkio is a platform that allows users to develop, deploy, and manage advanced ML models quickly and cost-effectively. Unlike other AutoML platforms, Akkio requires no coding or extensive knowledge of machine learning algorithms. It has a simple point-and-click user interface that helps non-technical users apply ML to their business processes with minimal effort.

Akkio offers integrations with many other data sources, allowing users to perform predictive analytics on their data quickly and with minimal effort, and deploy the resulting models across their organization. It uses an automated model-building process, using neural architecture search (NAS) that scans many potential algorithms and finds the best performers, all without any human intervention. It also has modelOps features that make it easy to monitor and maintain ML models over time, helping to ensure continued success and cost-effectiveness.

Simply put, Akkio offers businesses an easy-to-use, cost-effective platform for applying ML to their operations, helping them revolutionize their business processes and realize significant cost savings in the process.

Conclusion

Businesses dealing with big data require powerful solutions to process, store and analyze it. Snowflake data warehouses provide a scalable, cost-effective solution for doing so. However, traditional data warehouses can’t leverage the power of machine learning algorithms that are required to uncover hidden patterns in large data sets.

Snowflake is an ideal environment for leveraging ML algorithms due to its cloud-based infrastructure and scalability. It also offers integrations for popular tools, including Akkio, making it easier to integrate ML into a company’s data warehouse.

From fraud prevention and lead scoring to predictive maintenance and employee attrition monitoring, leveraging machine learning in a Snowflake warehouse has many applications. Akkio’s AutoML platform makes it easier than ever for businesses to quickly apply ML without needing coding or technical skills. Sign up for a free trial today to use ML in your Snowflake data warehouse.

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