In his new role at Snowflake, Ali will be responsible for the growth of the company’s operations in Saudi Arabia, including developing relationships with customers and prospects — such as government entities and local businesses — expanding the local partner ecosystem, and growing the local Snowflake team. Ali will drive the adoption of Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud across various industries, including the public sector, financial services, oil and gas, manufacturing, and retail.

Ali Al-Ismail, Country Manager for Snowflake KSA, said, “Saudi Arabia is a dynamic growth market that is rapidly transitioning to a data-driven economy. Snowflake is really at the forefront of this technological shift and this was a key driver in my move to Snowflake. As country manager, my top priority is to empower our customers to harness the full potential of their data to drive successful and actionable business outcomes to support the Kingdom’s digital transformation through Vision 2030.”

Ali brings nearly 20 years of experience in sales leadership and business development having held senior roles at leading technology companies, including Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco, and Alcatel, with a focus on the oil and gas industries, utilities, and mid-market growth companies. Most recently, Ali served as senior sales leader for Oracle in Saudi Arabia, where he built high-performing SaaS sales and channel teams from the ground up and achieved double-digit growth for the company’s cloud solutions. Ali is a graduate with a computer engineering degree from the King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM).

Mohamed Zouari, General Manager for the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey at Snowflake, added, “Ali’s leadership comes at a pivotal time for Snowflake as we expand our footprint in Saudi Arabia to help customers in the Kingdom with their most important data challenges with faster, cost-efficient, secure, and compliant data solutions. His deep understanding of the local market and commitment to fostering innovation will play a vital role in enabling organizations to leverage Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud to drive business innovation while adhering to the highest standards of data security and sovereignty.”

Doubling down on Snowflake’s commitment to Saudi, and equipping the global workforce with essential skills for the AI-driven future, Snowflake has launched its One Million Minds + One Platform program to certify over 100,000 users globally on the Snowflake AI Data Cloud by 2027, and upskilling one million people on data and AI by 2029. The program offers free, live introductory training courses led by Snowflake-certified instructors, providing hands-on experience to empower participants to drive their organizations’ data transformation journeys. In a high-growth market like Saudi Arabia, where 67% of respondents in PwC’s Workplace Hopes and Fears survey believe upskilling will enhance their job performance in the next five years, this initiative aligns with the Kingdom’s vision to build a data-ready workforce and develop a data-driven economy.

Speaking about the One Million Minds program, Ali added, “Vision 2030 is focused on transforming the nation to a more diversified and innovative economy, and Snowflake’s One Million Minds + One Platform program is helping drive this aim forward. Data and AI are fundamental aspects of today’s business environment, and this program aims to democratise data and AI use, enabling people in the Kingdom the opportunity to build successful careers as the technologists and founders of tomorrow.”

How did the industry and your company fare in 2024, and what were the key highlights?
2024 was a transformative year for the data and cloud industry, driven by the increasing importance of artificial intelligence and analytics. Snowflake stood at the forefront of this transformation, delivering groundbreaking advancements that empower enterprises to harness the full potential of data and AI.

One of the most significant milestones was the introduction of Snowflake Cortex AI, which enables enterprises to build conversational solutions, run large language model (LLM) pipelines, and train models securely at scale. Additionally, innovations such as the Snowflake Open Catalog, which supports open lakehouse architectures, and Document AI, designed to extract actionable insights from unstructured data like PDFs, highlight our commitment to driving efficiency and intelligence across workflows.

Snowflake also launched Secure Model Sharing, facilitating the distribution and monetization of AI models, and the Internal Marketplace, which allows teams to collaborate securely on data, AI models, and applications within their organizations. Another major highlight was the general availability of Snowflake Unistore, which enables customers to use Hybrid Tables to unify transactional and analytical data, offering them a modern and secure platform for innovation.

In 2024, Snowflake reported product revenue of $900.3 million in the third quarter, reflecting a 29% year-over-year increase. The net revenue retention rate stood at 127%, indicating robust customer expansion. Snowflake now has 542 customers with trailing 12-month product revenue greater than $1 million, representing 25% year-over-year growth. Additionally, the company serves 754 Forbes Global 2000 customers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year.

What opportunities do you foresee for 2025, and how do you plan to leverage them?
The emergence of AI-driven data strategies presents unparalleled opportunities in 2025. Organizations will focus on leveraging practical AI applications to accelerate decision-making, optimize productivity, and unlock new growth avenues. For Snowflake, AI adoption is not just about enabling technology, but also about creating value across industries. We see significant potential in markets like Saudi Arabia, where national transformation initiatives prioritize digital innovation. Our platform’s ability to support regulatory compliance, AI observability, and seamless collaboration across ecosystems positions us to drive impact in these ambitious initiatives.

What major challenges did you encounter in 2024, and how did you address them?
One of the industry’s greatest challenges in 2024 was navigating the evolving regulatory landscape and ensuring data reliability amidst the AI revolution. At Snowflake, we addressed this by doubling down on data governance solutions and expanding our AI observability capabilities to help enterprises build trust in AI outputs.

Additionally, the rise in privacy concerns around AI models underscored the need for robust safeguards. By integrating advanced security features and fostering collaboration with regulators and industry stakeholders, we reinforced our commitment to ethical and reliable AI innovation.

Which emerging technologies will be in high demand in 2025, and why?
In 2025, AI observability will move from a niche topic to a critical enterprise requirement, enabling organizations to trust, refine, and scale their AI implementations. We also anticipate rapid adoption of agentic systems, AI-powered applications capable of autonomous decision-making within human-defined guardrails.
Moreover, semantic layers for data platforms will redefine how enterprises contextualize and analyse data, unlocking deeper insights without reinventing semantic concepts for each application. These advancements align with Snowflake’s mission to empower businesses with actionable intelligence.

What will be your primary focus areas and strategic priorities for 2025?
Snowflake will focus on accelerating innovation, advancing AI-driven capabilities, and ensuring data sovereignty for our customers. Expanding our global footprint, particularly in high-growth regions like the Middle East, remains a key priority. Supporting customers with localized infrastructure, enhanced regulatory compliance, and tailored solutions will drive our strategy.

Additionally, we’ll continue investing in tools like Apache Iceberg tables and Unistore to empower organizations with flexible data architecture, enabling them to seamlessly manage both structured and unstructured data.

Are there plans to explore new markets or introduce new products/applications to your portfolio in 2025?
Snowflake is actively exploring new geographies and verticals to further extend our reach and impact. Building on the success of 2024, we are committed to introducing additional tools that complement our existing portfolio and help businesses meet their needs. With initiatives like our expansion to Saudi Arabia, Snowflake is poised to support national digital agendas while simultaneously enabling businesses to achieve global scalability with a single, integrated platform.

Check out the GITEX 2024 Special Edition: https://arabianreseller.com/oct2024

Tell us about your participation in GITEX 2024. Which products and solutions will you showcase at the event?
Snowflake will showcase its latest innovations in generative AI and its platform. The team will be unveiling advancements such as Native Apps, Cortex, and Snowflake gen AI & LLM features, which are designed to revolutionize data utilization for strategic advantage. Snowflake’s booth (H8-B30) will feature live demos, presentations, and success stories from key partners, showcasing how the platform empowers businesses to enhance operational efficiencies and unlock growth opportunities with AI-driven insights.

How has the regional tech landscape evolved in the past couple of years?
In the past few years, the regional tech landscape has substantially transformed, particularly with a significant increase in AI investments. In 2023, despite economic fluctuations, the global AI market saw a sevenfold rise in investments. The UAE Strategy 2031, is transforming the country’s digital transformation and propelling the integration of advanced technologies such as AI, machine learning, and cloud-native solutions across various sectors, including retail, healthcare, and logistics.

Additionally, the IT spending outlook remains strong and is projected to reach $1.6 trillion in 2024 according to Statista, underscoring the ongoing investment in technology infrastructure and services. Snowflake has been at the forefront of these developments, enabling organisations to leverage advanced data solutions to enhance customer engagement, optimize operations, and drive innovation.

What are your expectations from the event this year?
Snowflake aims to demonstrate how its AI Data Cloud can help businesses in the UAE and the broader region harness the full potential of data while making enterprise AI trusted, safe, and easy to use. As AI advances at an unprecedented pace, Snowflake is committed to enabling organizations to leverage AI securely, with robust governance frameworks that protect privacy, mitigate bias, and ensure transparency. At GITEX, Snowflake will showcase the significant advancements made in AI-driven functionality, highlighting how the platform enables secure AI/ML workloads on enterprise data while revolutionizing the developer and administrative experience with AI-powered tools.

The Snowflake team is eager to engage in collaborative discussions with industry leaders, potential clients, and partners. These interactions will provide invaluable insights into how our platform helps businesses achieve unparalleled data governance, seamlessly access first- and third-party AI models, and leverage a self-managing, elastic infrastructure that scales according to their needs. Our approach underscores the importance of fostering responsible AI innovation that enhances decision-making while prioritizing safety, security, and transparency.

What will be your theme of participation at GITEX 2024?
The theme for GITEX 2024, “Empowering the Future with Data and AI in the UAE,” highlights Snowflake’s commitment to supporting the UAE’s vision of becoming a global AI and data innovation hub. We aim to demonstrate how Snowflake’s platform empowers businesses to seamlessly integrate AI into their operations while ensuring robust data governance and security. By delivering a simplified, AI-driven user experience, we remove complexity, enabling customers to confidently harness AI’s potential and make data-driven decisions that drive success.

Do you plan to run any online engagements such as webinars and offline engagements such as tech talks, demos, keynotes, and so on, alongside GITEX 2024?
Snowflake will host a range of offline engagements, including tech talks, thought leadership keynotes, and one-on-one meetings with technical experts. Visitors will also have the chance to experience live demos of our latest AI-driven solutions. These sessions will provide deep insights into how Snowflake’s platform addresses current trends and challenges in cloud-based data management. Mohamed Zouari, General Manager – Middle East, Turkey and Africa will also deliver a keynote speech on unlocking the power of data for organizations.

How have your regional strategies changed in recent months?
Snowflake’s regional strategies have evolved to focus more on AI-driven innovation and strategic partnerships that align with the UAE’s digital transformation initiatives. We are focused on empowering industries like retail, healthcare, and logistics through advanced AI and machine learning capabilities to help them meet the rapidly changing demands of their sectors.

Additionally, our recent certification from the Dubai Electronic Security Center (DESC) enhances our ability to serve government and semi-government organizations by providing secure, compliant data solutions. This certification ensures compliance with stringent cybersecurity standards, enabling us to support the UAE’s digital transformation initiatives more robustly.

How do your regional strategies align with regional development initiatives run by various governments?
Snowflake’s strategies are closely aligned with the UAE’s ‘We the UAE 2031’ initiative, KSA Vision 2030 and other regional digital transformation goals. Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud plays a pivotal role in helping organizations eliminate data silos and mobilize their data for critical insights. We are committed to offering businesses in the region a unified data experience that fosters better decision-making while ensuring compliance with local and international data governance standards. This vision is supported by advancements like Snowflake Cortex AI, enabling seamless integration of AI and machine learning into daily operations.

Our focus on robust security and governance ensures that businesses can confidently leverage AI without compromising data integrity. With features such as role-based access definitions, we provide consistent protection across data, models, and applications. Key partnerships with Mistral AI and NVIDIA further expand our AI capabilities, allowing enterprises in the UAE to deploy use-case-specific AI solutions. Through this, we continue to support the UAE’s vision of becoming a global hub for AI-driven innovation.

Snowflake’s industry-leading AI Research Team has optimized Llama 3.1 405B for both inference and fine-tuning, supporting a massive 128K context window from day one, while enabling real-time inference with up to 3x lower end-to-end latency and 1.4x higher throughput than existing open source solutions. Moreover, it allows for fine-tuning on the massive model using just a single GPU node — eliminating costs and complexity for developers and users — all within Cortex AI.

By partnering with Meta, Snowflake is providing customers with easy, efficient, and trusted ways to seamlessly access, fine-tune, and deploy Meta’s newest models in the AI Data Cloud, with a comprehensive approach to trust and safety built-in at the foundational level.

“Snowflake’s world-class AI Research Team is blazing a trail for how enterprises and the open source community can harness state-of-the-art open models like Llama 3.1 405B for inference and fine-tuning in a way that maximizes efficiency,” said Vivek Raghunathan, VP of AI Engineering, Snowflake. “We’re not just bringing Meta’s cutting-edge models directly to our customers through Snowflake Cortex AI. We’re arming enterprises and the AI community with new research and open source code that supports 128K context windows, multi-node inference, pipeline parallelism, 8-bit floating point quantization, and more to advance AI for the broader ecosystem.”

Snowflake’s AI Research Team continues to push the boundaries of open-source innovations through its regular contributions to the AI community and transparency around how it is building cutting-edge LLM technologies. In tandem with the launch of Llama 3.1 405B, Snowflake’s AI Research Team is now open-sourcing its Massive LLM Inference and Fine-Tuning System Optimization Stack in collaboration with DeepSpeed, Hugging Face, vLLM, and the broader AI community. This breakthrough establishes a new state-of-the-art for open source inference and fine-tuning systems for multi-hundred billion parameter models.

Massive model scale and memory requirements pose significant challenges for users aiming to achieve low-latency inference for real-time use cases, high throughput for cost-effectiveness, and long context support for various enterprise-grade generative AI use cases. The memory requirements of storing model and activation states also make fine-tuning extremely challenging, with the large GPU clusters required to fit the model states for training often inaccessible to data scientists.

Snowflake’s Massive LLM Inference and Fine-Tuning System Optimization Stack addresses these challenges. By using advanced parallelism techniques and memory optimizations, Snowflake enables fast and efficient AI processing, without needing complex and expensive infrastructure. For Llama 3.1 405B, Snowflake’s system stack delivers real-time, high-throughput performance on just a single GPU node and supports massive 128k context windows across multi-node setups.

This flexibility extends to both next-generation and legacy hardware, making it accessible to a broader range of businesses. Moreover, data scientists can fine-tune Llama 3.1 405B using mixed precision techniques on fewer GPUs, eliminating the need for large GPU clusters. As a result, organizations can adapt and deploy powerful enterprise-grade generative AI applications easily, efficiently, and safely.

Snowflake’s AI Research Team has also developed optimized infrastructure for fine-tuning inclusive of model distillation, safety guardrails, retrieval augmented generation (RAG), and synthetic data generation so that enterprises can easily get started with these use cases within Cortex AI.

AI safety is of the utmost importance to Snowflake and its customers. As a result, Snowflake is making Snowflake Cortex Guard generally available to further safeguard against harmful content for any LLM application or asset built in Cortex AI — either using Meta’s latest models, or the LLMs available from other leading providers including AI21 Labs, Google, Mistral AI, Reka, and Snowflake itself. Cortex Guard leverages Meta’s Llama Guard 2, further unlocking trusted AI for enterprises so they can ensure that the models they’re using are safe.

The Snowflake Arctic LLM is a part of the Snowflake Arctic model family, a family of models built by Snowflake that also includes the best practical text-embedding models for retrieval use cases. “This is a watershed moment for Snowflake, with our AI research team innovating at the forefront of AI,” said Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO, Snowflake. “By delivering industry-leading intelligence and efficiency in a truly open way to the AI community, we are furthering the frontiers of what open-source AI can do. Our research with Arctic will significantly enhance our capability to deliver reliable, efficient AI to our customers.”

According to a recent report by Forrester, approximately 46 per cent of global enterprise AI decision-makers noted that they are leveraging existing open-source LLMs to adopt generative AI as a part of their organization’s AI strategy.1 With Snowflake as the data foundation for more than 9,400 companies and organizations around the world2, it is empowering all users to leverage their data with industry-leading open LLMs, while offering them flexibility and choice with what models they work with.

Now with the launch of Arctic, Snowflake is delivering a powerful, truly open model with an Apache 2.0 license that permits ungated personal, research, and commercial use. Taking it one step further, Snowflake also provides code templates, alongside flexible inference and training options so users can quickly get started with deploying and customizing Arctic using their preferred frameworks. These will include NVIDIA NIM with NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM, vLLM, and Hugging Face. For immediate use, Arctic is available for serverless inference in Snowflake Cortex, Snowflake’s fully managed service that offers machine learning and AI solutions in the Data Cloud. It will also be available on Amazon Web Services (AWS), alongside other model gardens and catalogs, which will include Hugging Face, Lamini, Microsoft Azure, NVIDIA API catalog, Perplexity, Together AI, and more.

Snowflake’s AI research team, which includes a unique composition of industry-leading researchers and system engineers, took less than three months and spent roughly one-eighth of the training cost of similar models when building the Arctic. Trained using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) P5 instances, Snowflake is setting a new baseline for how fast state-of-the-art open, enterprise-grade models can be trained, ultimately enabling users to create cost-efficient custom models at scale.

As a part of this strategic effort, Arctic’s differentiated MoE design improves both training systems and model performance, with a meticulously designed data composition focused on enterprise needs. The Arctic also delivers high-quality results, activating 17 out of 480 billion parameters at a time to achieve industry-leading quality with unprecedented token efficiency. In an efficiency breakthrough, Arctic activates roughly 50 per cent fewer parameters than DBRX, and 75 per cent less than Llama 3 70B during inference or training. In addition, it outperforms leading open models including DBRX, Mixtral-8x7B, and more in coding (HumanEval+, MBPP+) and SQL generation (Spider), while simultaneously providing leading performance in general language understanding (MMLU).

Snowflake continues to provide enterprises with the data foundation and cutting-edge AI building blocks they need to create powerful AI and machine learning apps with their enterprise data. When accessed in Snowflake Cortex, Arctic will accelerate customers’ ability to build production-grade AI apps at scale, within the security and governance perimeter of the Data Cloud.

In addition to the Arctic LLM, the Snowflake Arctic family of models also includes the recently announced Arctic embed, a family of state-of-the-art text embedding models available to the open-source community under an Apache 2.0 license. The family of five models are available on Hugging Face for immediate use and will soon be available as part of the Snowflake Cortex embed function (in private preview). These embedding models are optimized to deliver leading retrieval performance at roughly a third of the size of comparable models, giving organizations a powerful and cost-effective solution when combining proprietary datasets with LLMs as part of a Retrieval Augmented Generation or semantic search service.

Snowflake also prioritizes giving customers access to the newest and most powerful LLMs in the Data Cloud, including the recent additions of Reka and Mistral AI’s models. Moreover, Snowflake recently announced an expanded partnership with NVIDIA to continue its AI innovation, bringing together the full-stack NVIDIA accelerated platform with Snowflake’s Data Cloud to deliver a secure and formidable combination of infrastructure and compute capabilities to unlock AI productivity. Snowflake Ventures has also recently invested in Landing AI, Mistral AI, Reka, and more to further Snowflake’s commitment to helping customers create value from their enterprise data with LLMs and AI.

Tell us about your participation at GITEX 2023. Which products and solutions will you be showcasing at the event?
At GITEX 2023, Snowflake is set to highlight the limitless potential of generative AI and LLMs. We will discuss how Snowflake’s platform connects organisations to the Data Cloud, and securely leverages generative AI and Large Language Model (LLM) innovations. We have recently made strategic investments to fast-track these technologies for our customers, including acquisitions of Neeva, Applica, Streamlit, and Reka.

In line with this, Snowflake has rolled out Document AI (private preview), which utilizes its in-house large language model to gather deeper insights from documents more quickly, accurately, and easily. Additionally, the introduction of Snowpark Container Services, also in private preview, broadens Snowflake’s computing capabilities to accommodate diverse workloads, such as full-stack apps, secure hosting of large language models, efficient model training, and more—all within the secure environment of Snowflake.
Snowflake will also highlight its solutions to tackle vertical-specific challenges and opportunities in various sectors like finance, retail, and advertising.

What are your expectations from the event this year?
We are incredibly excited about this year’s event as it aligns perfectly with Snowflake’s mission to eliminate data silos and mobilize enterprise data. Our expectations are twofold:

1. Showcase Advancements: We look forward to demonstrating the significant strides Snowflake has made in AI-driven functionality. Our platform now not only enables secure AI/ML workloads on enterprise data but also reimagines the developer and administrative experience through AI.
2. Collaboration and Learning: We anticipate engaging in discussions and collaboration with industry leaders, potential clients, and partners. These interactions will provide valuable insights into how businesses can achieve unparalleled governance over their data, access first and third-party AI models, and benefit from a self-managing, elastic infrastructure.

What will be your theme of participation at GITEX 2023?
As AI allows companies to embrace new capabilities, our theme at GITEX is focused on delivering a great product experience and removing complexity for our customers in successfully leveraging this new technology. Our AI-driven user experience is designed to delight, ensuring that our customers can fully embrace AI’s potential and confidently make data-driven decisions.

Attendees will get an exclusive look at how Snowflake enables businesses to create and monetize data-intensive applications and deploy them directly in the Data Cloud. Utilizing Snowflake as the core platform for application development can transform data sharing and collaboration across an entire organization, setting a new standard in the data-sharing economy.

Do you plan to run any online engagements such as webinars and offline engagements such as tech talks, demos, keynotes, and so on, alongside GITEX 2023?
We will be hosting an array of compelling sessions showcasing our cutting-edge product portfolio, and a panel discussion with Mohammed Zouari, General Manager – Middle East, Turkey & Africa along with some of our esteemed customers to share insights on unlocking the power of data for organizations.

How have your regional strategies changed in recent months?
In recent months, Snowflake has been focusing on helping companies in the UAE capitalize on the burgeoning growth and interest in AI and LLMs. Our regional strategy has evolved to address the unique needs and opportunities in this market. Here are some key aspects:

1. Secure and Governed Platform: One of our unique selling points is providing a secure and governed platform that allows businesses to maximize their AI potential. We offer consistent protection across data and models, safeguarding data from unintended use through role-based access definitions. This ensures a unified approach to security and governance across data, computing, models, and apps.
2. Infrastructure for LLM Apps: We’ve simplified the process of developing Language Learning Model (LLM) applications. Our platform enables companies to focus on customizing LLMs and building apps that unlock new experiences. This is made possible through our container-based, GPU-powered compute provisioned with auto-scaling definitions, all achievable in under 10 lines of code.
3. LLM-Powered Analytics & Development: To further accelerate development and analytics, we offer built-in tools and functions that leverage Snowflake-managed LLMs. This allows for quicker analysis of unstructured data and the use of AI assistants to speed up development cycles.

Tenable One, Powered by Snowflake, helps joint customers gain a holistic view of their entire attack surface — including software and web application vulnerabilities, cloud misconfigurations, identity, and access weaknesses – and glean actionable insights with out-of-the-box dashboards, risk scoring, and attack path analysis. Tenable One delivers a scalable, global exposure management platform to help customers prevent cyberattacks and accurately communicate cyber risk to support optimal business performance.

“Our work with Snowflake is critical in helping customers quickly identify exposures, prioritize remediation, and reduce cyber risk,” said Glen Pendley, chief technology officer, Tenable. “Leveraging the Snowflake Data Cloud enabled us to be highly scalable and efficient, and deliver a seamless user experience. The flexibility provided by Snowflake allows us to focus on developing platform features, delivering greater value to customers faster. We look forward to further expanding our partnership to build even deeper product integrations that support our ecosystem.”

“Tenable and Snowflake’s partnership represents tremendous potential for data-driven security programs,” said Omer Singer, Head of Cybersecurity Strategy, Snowflake. “As our Cybersecurity Partner of the Year, Tenable has made great strides towards unifying vulnerability insights, asset inventory, and other key aspects of attack surface- all on the Data Cloud. We are proudly committed to breaking down silos together for cybersecurity teams across our customers.”

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