Snowflake launches Retail Data Cloud

Snowflake today launched Retail Data Cloud, which allows retailers, manufacturers, distributors, CPG vendors, and industry technology providers to leverage their own data, access new data, and securely collaborate across the retail industry. 

What does it do? Users can integrate their data regardless of source, speed, or format, creating a single, synchronized information source. Security capabilities include data clean rooms, auditability features like double-blind joins, restricted queries, centralized role-based access control, and other features that allow data to be shared without risking personally identifiable information.

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“Retailers and CPGs can now connect with partners and each other in the Data Cloud to take data-driven action and better serve their customers in a rapidly changing environment,” said Rosemary Hua, Retail and CPG Industry GTM lead at Snowflake.

Why we care: Here we have another result of the pending loss of cookie-based tracking. Absent that technology, clean rooms are emerging as an attractive option to allow brands to share data. Of course, these tools need to be able to safely allow participants to share data without exposing identifiable customer info.

Having a data clean room and further control at very detailed levels should significantly reduce actual and potential IP risk. But what really matters here for marketers is the ability to build partnerships that yield more data, which powers all marketing today.

Read next: Informatica launches retail-specific Intelligent Data Management Cloud

About The Author

Constantine von Hoffman is managing editor of MarTech. A veteran journalist, Con has covered business, finance, marketing and tech for CBSNews.com, Brandweek, CMO, and Inc. He has been city editor of the Boston Herald, news producer at NPR, and has written for Harvard Business Review, Boston Magazine, Sierra, and many other publications. He has also been a professional stand-up comedian, given talks at anime and gaming conventions on everything from My Neighbor Totoro to the history of dice and boardgames, and is author of the magical realist novel John Henry the Revelator. He lives in Boston with his wife, Jennifer, and either too many or too few dogs.